Enterprise Alternate Pilot, First Steps
by Charles Markov
Summary: Broken bow was a fine episode, but as a pilot I always thought it felt more like fan service than what is could have been, namely an episode that showed humans early days of spaceflight, before the Federation and before Earth was a major power, when there truly was just one ship alone in the galaxy. This is my attempt, it is also a reupload because I botched the first attempt.


Episode April 1

First steps

Part one

"Easy there Trip!" Captain Johnathan Archer, UESPA, said as the small pod he and Chief Operations Officer Charles Tucker the third, Trip to his friends, were sat in lurched again.

"I said it when we left the station that if you wanted a smooth no hiccups ride that you should have ridden in with a professional pilot," Trip said with no apology. "We'll get there soon enough!"

"Will we be in a single piece still by then is my question," Archer said dryly. Trip nudged him with one elbow and used his free hand to deliberately jiggle the controls. The pod shook in response. Nocking the bill of Archer cap into the transparent aluminium viewport at the front of the tiny pod.

Any retort or reprimand became stuck in Archers throat as they finally hove into sight of there destination. Suddenly his face was right up against the viewport.

'Quite the sight isn't it?" Trip asked smiling ear to ear with pride. Archer wasnt paying the slightest bit of attention to him.

At a little under two hundred and twenty five metres long and one hundred and twenty wide the E-class long range explorer Enterprise was somewhat small by even the standards of typical Earth ships. She was barely larger than the Iroquois class patrol cruisers of the United Earth Stellar Navy. Despite of this the ship was vastly more capable.

Her odd hull form spoke of some of this. A large flattened disk served as the vessels main hull. With a pair of long nacelles housing powerful warp coils were suspended from the hull by pylons which came out of the saucer like primary hulls aft.

She was unusual to say the least. Well unusual compared to most ships with the exception of the handful of testbeds and proof of concept vehicles which had come before her. One of them, the Beagle, a training ship and demonstrator, was parked in a nearby orbit to Enterprise and looked positively tiny. Like a minnow beside a whale.

Archer, if possible, felt even smaller in his tiny pod. Trip slowed the vehicle down with a burst of thrusters and brought them along the ship. Flying around the graceful lines of Enterprise and giving her captain a good view of his ship.

"Don't scratch the pain!" Archer shouted as Trip got a little to close around the ships forward missile tubes. The tiny pod smacked the larger vessel with a resounding metallic clang and Trip wore a stunned expression so ridiculous that Archer could not help but laugh.

Impromptu tour over the pod docked in the ships hangar, a large cavity sat between the warp nacelle pylons large enough to house the ships compliment of four shuttles, two tenders and a pair of cargo shuttles.

In what seemed like forever, but was actually a few minutes the pod autodocked with the ship and with a hiss a secure pressure seal was established by the docking ring.

"After you," Trip said motioning to the waiting ladder just outside the pod.

Archer gracefully disentangled himself from the web of safety and crash harnesses of the pods passenger seat, graceful meaning he looked much like a fish caught in a net, and climbed up the ladder and onto the ship proper.

"Captain sir," Helmsman Travis Mayweather said as Archer emerged from the docking ring.

"Hello Travis how are you?" Archer asked shaking the mans hand. He knew he was smiling much wider than usual. He likely looked like a complete idiot. He did not care.

"Pretty good, I think I finally have the helm arranged the way that I want it," Travis said. The two men stood there for a few moment awkwardly. "Sorry to hear about your dad," Mayweather finally said his voice becoming much more sympathetic.

Archer coughed. His father, Henry Archer, had been largely responsible for the Enterprise and the revolution it represented. Travis, and most of the ships crew had worked with him extensively. His death to a rare degenerative brain disorder so close to the launch of his dream had been a blow to everyone.

"Thanks," Archer said automatically. It had been four days. Four days since he had rushed into the hospital to see the lifeless body of his father being removed from his bed, minutes late in saying goodbye.

He had been sick most of his life. Sheerans disorder as it was known was rare, and totally preventable provided it was caught early. Fortunately Archer had been treated shortly after birth, the doctors knowing to look as his father was then suffering the early stages of the disease. But for those in whom the disorder was not caught in its early stages it was a long, slow and inevitable process.

Archer would never get the memory of the last time he had seen his father, the quivering and convulsing form that had cared for him all his life, been his friend and mentor throughout his life. And he had seen the look of shame in his fathers eyes as he saw his son standing in shock at seeing him.

Thinking about it he nearly teared up right there. The knowledge that the last thing his father had seen of his son was shock and fear would forever haunt him Archer knew. But this was not the time to dwell on it and so he pushed such thoughts from his mind.

"Are we ready to get underway?" He asked changing subjects. Mayweather sensed the hidden meaning and nodded.

"For the most part, we still are waiting to take on ambassador Fel and her staff, ambassador Soval and his staff are already aboard and are expecting to meet with you at your convenience. And they did stress that." Almost as an afterthought Mayweather handed Archer a full report on the ships readiness, schedule and estimated time of departure.

It looked good, very good. The ship had taken aboard all her stores and fuel, reactors were being brought on line, warp nacelles warmed up and all ships systems tested, so far with no faults. It was shaping up to be a pretty good day if not for the Vulcan presence aboard and sudden change of plans for the ship.

Initially it had been planned for Enterprise to undergo an extensive shakedown period in the Sol system, humiliating the UESN as Enterprise set numerous new warp speed and endurance records in their own backyard. The ship would then be sent to Alpha Centari to commemorate the death of Zephrame Cochrane, the inventor of the warp drive before the ship set out on a year long mission to explore as much space as she could before heading back to Earth for refuelling and evaluation on her performance.

Instead the ships maiden voyage had been hijacked for political reasons. The current Forum chairman and leader of the United Earth Michael Rubenetov had ordered the ship to Vulcan as a shakedown cruise instead. Her new mission to flaunt Earths achievements in propulsion by transporting a group of assorted diplomats from Earth to Vulcan and then back again.

He had done this Archer suspected to garner favour with his political base which wanted him to be stronger in his dealings with Vulcan, while also giving the same Vulcans a chance to look at the ship for themselves and see that it really was just a simple explorer at heart, albeit an explorer faster than any UE vessel to date with enough free volume to carry a very heavy weapons loadout.

Rubenetov did not have Archers vote when he went up for re-election. Nor did he have the love of the UESPA. He had ignored even director Forrest's concerns over giving the ship such a high profile mission when she was not yet even fully tested, instead threatening to replace him entirely.

Archer knew that the Vulcans had pressured the man into this, the sudden change of orders reeked of it. Director Forrest had said much the same thing, confiding that there were likely spies in the ambassadors staff who would try to get all they could from Enterprise. Something that Archer felt was entirely plausible.

Archer finished reading the report and signed off on it. "Looks good," he said, handing it back to Mayweather. "I think me a Trip are going to check up on the engine room if there is nothing that needs my immediate attention." Mayweather shook his head to signify that there wasn't. He left report in hand and both Trip and Archer headed the short distance to main engineering.

The room was large and sat in the center of the ships primary hull. Even so it felt rather small and cramped. Much of its volume being taken up by the massive spherical reactor that dominated the room, massive was somewhat of an understatement though as it was small by the standards of shipboard fusion reactors. Nevertheless its bulk dominated the room and took up four decks worth of space.

Trip immediately descended into the chaos that was the startup sequence. A lengthy six hour long process just going into the critical hour four mark. Archer spent a little bit of time there watching, but really he was more in the way than anything else and so left after just a little bit of time to go to the bridge proper.

Technically the room was the command center as the word bridge had been stolen by the UESN for their ships, but nevertheless the room was called so by the ships crew out of habit.

All snapped their heads to the lift as Archer walked in. "Captain!" Mayweather said with a smile. "What do you think with the ship all put together?"

Archer did not answer immediately, he was to busy taking in the bridge, last time he had seen it the room was just bare walls, lighting and panelling had not even been installed yet. "Quite a sight," he said and meant it.

He had been heavily involved in the outfitting of the ship. Working closely with both his crew and spacedock workers until he had been forced to spend most of his time working with the UESPA board of directors to plan how the ship would be used, press conferences and training sessions with the officers earmarked to command the next three E class ships. Columbia, Discovery and Atlantis. His fathers passing had been the final thing keeping him from seeing the ship fully put together.

"Would I be right in assuming all the consoles work properly?" He asked playing with the helm controls. Mayweather smiled.

"When we power them up they should work just fine. But until we need to leave orbit there is really no need. He to grabbed at the controls and began idly flipping buttons.

"My stations are fully powered up so if you would mind not playing with them," a gruff British accented voice said from behind Archer. He turned with a false smile.

"How are you Malcom?" He asked Lieutenant-Commander Malcom Reed, the leader of the twelve man UESN team stationed aboard Enterprise to man and operate the ships limited armament of three point defence lasers and defensive missiles. Because he belonged to the UESN he did not fully fit in with the rest of the crew, his gruff attitude and apparent scorn for those around him was not helping to change this.

"Just fine sir," Reed said glancing up for a moment to smile partially at Archer before getting back to whatever he was doing at that time. "Just making a few final checks before we leave. Want to make sure that everything is working fully."

"Keeps talking about wanting all weapons to be fully functional, almost like he thinks we will be attacked by the Vulcans or something," Mayweather joked. Reed was not smiling.

"I expect no such thing," he said with a sigh. "Captain I merely want to ensure that all of the ships systems under my supervision are functioning the way the are intended to. I would hate to go on our first mission with jammed missile tubes and misaligned lasers."

Archer hid an internal sigh. Reed was a perfectly good, if somewhat formal and non sequitur officer. Unlike some naval personnel he had met Reed held no real malice towards the civilians he was surrounded by. Choosing to do his job and not make any enemies.

His problem was that he was very much a no nonsense kind of person, the very image of a UESN officer. Humourless and icy he carried out his duties with impressive skill, but outside of necessary conversations Archer would not choose to have much to do with him.

"And how are our defensive systems coming along?" Archer asked. He was not allowed to use the term weapons, Reed had explained that a warship carried weapons. UESPA vessels mounted defences. Even if the lasers Enterprise mounted were the same as those carried by the latest UESN cruiser.

"Not to bad. Still waiting for the final batch of missiles for launcher three, and number two laser is still a little misaligned. Otherwise everything shows as just fine." Reed looked around his station, a cluster of consoles to the right of the captains chair located in the center of the room. He produced a report of his own. "Everything is in there sir, awaiting your final signature as soon as I have the last of the missiles and the laser aligned.

Archer had to admit that as stiff as he was Reed was never late with a report, in fact if anything his reports were a little overly complex. Leaving nothing out and attempting to answer any and all questions a person may have before they could ask them.

This report was no different and Archer only glanced through it. "Let me know when you want it signed and I will read it through," he said passing the document back. Reed nodded.

Archer spoke with the rest of the bridge crew for a little while. He knew each of them quite well. Mayew, the ships second helmsman was stood off in a corner of the room, waiting to take over from Travis, One the aft operations station was a new addition to the crew, technical specialist Daniels, the engineering section located in its own little niche at the very back of the bridge was currently unmanned. That left the science stations which were currently manned by only a single person.

"Hello captain!" Hoshi Sato, lingual prodigy and close friend of Johnathans said with a sheepish smile.

"Hoshi how are you adjusting to life in space?" Archer had finally managed to convince her to join him aboard Enterprise a week prior, just after his fathers death. It would be good to have the planets foremost xenolinguist aboard once Enterprise got into truly uncharted space. Assuming she could handle it.

"Not as well as you may expect," Hoshi answered holding up a, thankfully, empty vomit bag. "Artificial gravity is a harsh mistress."

"It takes some getting used to," Archer admitted smiling at the joke, she was quoting a classic movie, the two of them both being major film buffs.

That concluded the introductions and looking at the clock Archer realised he still had two hours before the ship got fully underway. And there was not really anything to pressing for him to do. At least not pressing enough that he could get out of the only real thing he had to do before the ship officially launched.

"Malcom do you think you can look after things while I greet ambassador Soval?" Archer asked. Officially Enterprise held no second in command like aboard naval vessels. With a crew of just two hundred it was felt that such a position was unnecessary, just one more mouth to eat up valuable provisions and shorten the ships range to explore. This meant that when the captain was away command of the ship fell on whoever was there for him to give it to. Usually it fell on Mayweather, but he did not want to give the impression this early into the ships mission that he had favourites.

Reed was somewhat surprised by the question, he had been given command only a few times. But he readily accepted, it did not much interfere with his duties at the moment as the ship was just parked in orbit. He went back to working on his console and generally left everyone else alone. Archer left the bridge and headed off to the ships hastily constructed guest quarters, empty science labs hastily converted to accommodation suitable for housing a few dozen members of the diplomatic corps of both Earth and Vulcan.

"Captain I was beginning to wonder if I would have the privilege of meeting with you before we got underway." Ambassador Soval had answered the door himself at Archers knock. Unlike some ships in the fleet Enterprise did not have buzzers to alert a person when someone was at the door.

"What kind of host would I be if I did not check up on my guests." Archer had dealt with enough Vulcans to be fairly proficient at their infernal politeness.

"I am aware that you are a busy man, from what your director Forrest told me you have been rather busy as of late planetside." There was a slight undertone of curiosity in the ambassadors voice.

Archer smiled, as always uncomfortable with the Vulcans obvious examination of him. He wondered if the Vulcan knew what had made it necessary for him to be on Earth but decided he probably did not. "I have been, but things cleared up so that I could get aboard an hour or two ago."

"Your first class specialist Travis Mayweather informed me of your arrival," Soval said. "The two of us were discussing your fine vessel."

Archer wondered if Travis had said anything specific, or if the ambassador had managed to get anything from him. He knew his helmsman had likely said only conflicting information to throw the Vulcan off.

"I must say before we get underway captain how sorry I am that your mission and proper shakedown cruise were delayed. I assure you neither I nor my government had any part in your change of orders." Soval looked generally apologetic, or as close as a Vulcan came.

Archer did not believe a word the man said, but he was not here to say that. "No need to apologize, chairman Rubenetov likely just wanted to show us off to our allies."

Soval kept up the lies. "A senseless decision, but one that does have the happy result that I get back to Vulcan a little earlier than if I had travelled aboard one of your warships."

Archer took issue with the your warships phrase but said nothing. "I was made to understand that you wanted to speak with me?" He asked instead.

Soval took a moment to collect his thoughts. Obviously thinking about his next words. "There are some among my staff that have significant prejudices against humans," he said finally and with some obvious discomfort. Archer did not think he was faking it.

"They will not be openly hostile or rude I assure you, we are not as aggressive even our racists as humans." Archer was amazed that Soval managed to get in an insult even here.

"They have been warned repeatedly about their illogical attidutes," he continued. "But to no avail. I doubt they will do anything unwise, but they may speak to you unkindly and not treat your wishes and orders with the respect they are due. I wanted to make you aware of this before we got to far into our journey."

Soval looked relieved to have gotten that off his chest. I made no difference to Archer, in his experience one Vulcan was as condescending and rude as the next and the knowledge that one may be deliberately rude did not phase him to terribly much if he was being honest.

"Thanks for the warning," he said trying his best to put in some amount of false gratitude. "I will keep this in mind."

He spoke further for a moment with ambassador Soval for a few minutes. Discussing their accommodations and the speed at which they would arrive at Vulcan. Soval admitted that Vulcan had no idea of Enterprises true reachable speed. But Archer was eager to get back to the bridge and get the ship underway. The ships time of departure was drawing ever nearer. He left with a promise to speak with Soval further at dinner.

Soval watched the human go with a mixture of feelings working through his mind. Unlike what many humans seemed to assume Vulcans did all experience emotions, but just controlled them through mental training ad discipline, not allowing their feelings and emotions to rule over them.

The captain had clearly been less than truthful and had not found his warning to be of to useful or important. Unsurprising as intelligence had already reported the man to have a bit of a prejudice himself towards Vulcans. Like many humans he believed they had held humanity back with their centuries of oversight into Earths affairs.

Soval snorted at the idea. Rather than hold humanity back with their two centuries of oversight and examination Vulcan had paved the way forward for Earth to become the bustling hive of activity it was today. Smoothing over the racial and religious differences that had dived the planet and repairing much of the damage inflicted by humans to their planet in their wars. If anything Vulcan had saved humanity from extinction and pulled their development far forwards.

He closed the doors to his quarters and shook his head. He doubted the staff members he had warned the captain about would get into to much trouble. But still he wanted to make it clear early in the trip that he was not responsible for their actions.

"Sir would you like for me to get back to my report?" A questioning voice asked behind him. Soval dismissed thoughts of the human and their two races relationship to focus on the report he had been getting before Archer interrupted.

"Please do," he said, sitting in the chair opposite the woman delivering the report.

At just thirty years old T'pol was one of the youngest members of Soval's staff. As well as one of his most helpful and important. As his scientific advisor and liaison with the UESPA she had also gradually assumed many further duties as his primary aid. Currently she had been giving a report on her observations of Enterprise and her conclusions regarding the capabilities of the ship in terms of speed, range and endurance.

"As I recall you were just about to speak about your views on the vessels armament," Soval said as a unnecessary reminder of her place.

"Indeed I was." T'pol looked down at her notes, a pile of paper on the table between their two seats. "Selvek is actually my source for the majority of the conclusions I reached, it would be better if I just allowed you to read through his official report," she handed him a few pages and the ambassador looked over the documents. He was not a naval officer, but he knew enough to follow along with the report.

"Selvek is thorough, if he says the ship is as lightly armed as this then I am inclined to believe him." T'pol nodded. It was not truly up to her to offer up opinions. She merely delivered information and made a logical conclusion.

But if she had been asked she would have said her opinions about the vessel they were aboard. In her mind, if she had been given the chance to speak, she would have said that she viewed the ship as a potential threat to Vulcans long enjoyed supremacy.

Earth was still a small power, in terms of its military, economy and population it was still well below Vulcan. With the current situation it was unlikely that this would change at any point in the near future. But a ship with Enterprises speed had the potential to make a major difference. Allowing Earth to circumvent Vulcan fleets in war, and spread far beyond their current frontiers in peace. Unless Vulcan possessed similar ships, and in a short period of time, they stood to be outmatched by Earth in a number of years.

In her opinion Earths development of the ship should have been observed much closer than it was. Soval was perfectly correct in his decision to keep a light approach at the time Enterprise had begun development, but in hindsight it had proven to be the wrong position.

T'pol knew this was likely the reason he had been recalled so suddenly. It was a mere fluke that the Forum Chairman of the UE, that man Rubetenov, had decided to order Enterprise to carry Soval to Vulcan. Giving the ambassador the chance he needed to recoup his losses.

They were not spying, not in the classic sense. More realistically they had been ordered to observe Enterprises abilities and performance and report on what they saw on arrival on Vulcan. As a part of this tours of the ship and discussion with its crew would be sought as much as possible. Those were the orders anyway, realistically conversations between Humans and Vulcans tended to be rather short and to the point. An efficient use of time, but one that seldom resulted in new information being learned.

"Are you paying attention?" Soval asked noticing that T'pol's mind seemed to be elsewhere. "I was asking if you would draft an initial report."

"Of course," T'pol kicked herself for allowing her thoughts to drift off in that manner. She gave no external sign of this internal rebuke however and rose. "I will do so in my quarters if that suits you."

"It does, we will be leaving orbit shortly, it would be best if you were in your own quarters." Soval rose and opened the door for her in a learned Human courtesy.

She left and began to write up a basic report on the ship. At this point they had learned little, other than the basic layout of the ship and her general capabilities. But it would serve as a useful template to be added to and altered at a later date once more had been learned of the ship. Beneath her feet the deck pulsed and vibrated, the whole experience seeming like the ship was going to tear itself apart. Such feelings would not be found on a Vulcan ship.

Hoshi Sato knew exactly how it felt to think the ship was going to tear itself apart. She clung for dear life to her console and closed her eyes. It was all she could do not to scream as the vibrating and roar of the ships engines grew louder.

"Warp factor two point four," Mayweather reported from the helm. "Warp factor two point five, warp factor two point six…"

He went on and on, each new point being massively faster than the last. The ship continued to accelerate and speed up and the shaking grew worse. For Sato, who had never left Earth orbit let alone travelled aboard a warp ship, it was terrifying. For the rest of the ships crew it was perfectly normal.

The ships speed levelled off at the warp three point five mark, the normal cruising speed for UESPA and UESN ships. After a few moments at this speed the vibrating and noise began to die down as the ships engines let off the power, once at a given warp velocity it became much easier and more power efficient to maintain that speed.

"Hold her steady Travis," Archer ordered. It might as well have ben music to Hoshi's ears. He looked over at her and smiled a daredevils grin. "What did you think?" He asked.

Hoshi decided to be honest. "That was terrifying," she admitted. She could see Trip hide a grin. Archer was a lot less careful in concealing the laugh he made. "Was I that obvious?" She asked. Trip now broke out into open laughter.

"You sounded like you were praying in Japanese or Orion or something!" He said between bursts of giggling. Sato blushed.

"I hadn't realised I had been talking out loud," she said her face a deep crimson red.

"We understand," Travis said doing his best to calm Hoshi.  
"Yes, we do," Malcom seconded. Hoshi did not know the man well. But he was the last one she expected to get any sympathy from.

"You do?" She asked somewhat stunned. Everyone else apparently shared her confusion as they stopped laughing at her and looked over at Reed.

"Yes, I do." Reed wondered why everyone was looking at him. He knew as a naval man he was not at all the most popular man on the ship. And he knew he could be a little cold, but did they all think him totally emotionless?

"It was her first time going to warp," he looked at her. "Am I correct in that assumption?" he asked. Sato nodded. "My first time at warp was just as terrifying," he said. All looked at him.

He decided it best to speak directly to Sato and ignore the stares of the others. "I was just out of school and was sent off to the Jupiter station, to get there I flew aboard the UES DaVinci. An old systems patrol ship. She only made warp one point eight, even so the little tin can vibrated so badly that I was convinced we were all about to die and tried my best to make for the escape pods, only to be restrained by the vessels captain, an old and grizzled Swede."

"Sounds like fun," Sato said stifling a giggle. Malcom did not much care, for one the young lady was very pretty, and for another he had obviously helped her not feel quite so bad about her minor freakout.

The vibrations had almost totally ceased to be noticeable now, she could still feel them. She had heard that the engine vibrations would never stop once the ship entered warp, and that the higher the speeds the ship travelled the worse the vibrations, though they would die down as the ships speed levelled out.

Archer read through the reports from the engine room and field control rooms and smiled. Everything was going as smoothly as he could have wished for. This was not the first time that Enterprise had gone to warp he knew, but she had never gone this fast.

He knew that warp factor three point five was about the fastest Earth designed vessels ever travelled, Vulcan ships were another story and could reasonably hope to reach warp factor three point eight or nine under normal cruising conditions.

Enterprise had been designed to achieve speeds as high as warp factor four point six, although for comparably short periods. In theory with a powerful enough engine she could reach as high as warp five, but the reactor fitted aboard at the moment could not hope to produce power sufficient for such speeds. Her cruising speed was considered as around warp factor four, well in excess of even the fastest Vulcan vessels cruising speed, and she reached such speeds consuming perhaps as little as ten percent that of what a Vulcan ship would.

Fuel was something every starship was traditionally very short on. Fusion reactors were incredibly thirsty machines, and the faster a ship wished the travel the more power was needed from the engines, equating to even more fuel.

This was not a problem at lower warp velocities, but as a vessel approached the warp two point three threshold it began to become a problem. Vessels needed ever more fuel to reach even the relatively short distances between star systems, leading to larger fuel tanks, and larger ships to fit them, and then larger tanks in an endless cycle. The fastest Vulcan ship that Earth was aware of, the Deik'lavas class, were immense half kilometre long monsters capable of reaching warp factor two point five for brief periods. Much of their internal volume was devoted entirely to fuel.

Not only was Enterprise faster than the Vulcan behemoth, she was also less than a tenth her displacement. And as icing on the cake with just ten percent of her hundred thousand ton displacement devoted to fuel she could travel more than six times farther than the Vulcan, a ship which devoted more than thirty percent of her displacement to fuel.

That was why Enterprise represented such a leap forward. She could remain on patrol far longer than a traditional design of starship, allowing her the range to be the first truly long range explorer ever built. She had a range measured in years rather than weeks, and capability to travel hundreds of lightyears on a single fuelling rather than a few dozen like normal vessels. She promised to be an incredibly effective explorer and had the potential to open up an entirely new frontier to human colonists and explorers.

That was also why the Vulcan wanted to know more about her. The ship was capable of tremendous feats of exploration with her revolutionary design. But, if armed even moderately, she represented an extremely fast and powerful ship capable of outflanking any traditional battlefleet without issue and striking deep into enemy territory. If Earth built a fleet of such warships, which the UESN seemed determined to do, then they would immediately become an extremely large threat even to the massive Vulcan space marine.

It was a sombering thought. At the moment the UESN, the military branch of the United Earths spacefaring forces, possessed only thirty cruisers, twenty of which were only short ranged ships. This made Earth a small power, with a fleet mostly only capable of policing its frontiers and colonies and little else.

But, with the same number of ships like Enterprise the UESN could easily send a fleet to the homesystem of any potential threat race and outflank them, or send its forces to raid and disrupt the enemies spaceborn shipping. Crippling their economy and strangling them into surrender. Granted once Vulcan designed and built their own similar vessels they would be once again the dominant power.

But the problem they were evidently facing was how to design their own high warp ship. Archer had not seen any intelligence reports. But he had heard rumours that Vulcans attempts in this field had so far ended only in disaster, they understood the basic concept, but were having trouble developing it into a proper working design.

Archer looked at the position board and smiled. The ship would pass Mars before to long, he had plans to beam a message to the Utopia Planetia colony as they passed. After that Jupiter lay on a direct path along Enterprise's exit course from the system. A thought struck Archer and he made a few adjustments to the course.

"Travis, tell me what you think about this," he said as he handed the helmsman his math. The other man smiled as he realized what his captain had planned.

"I like it sir," he grinned right back and passed the sheet of paper back to Archer.

"What is it?" Malcom asked wondering what had gotten the two so amused.

"You will see," Archer said wondering what his reaction would be. Frustrated Reed got back to his board. Whatever it was he could wait to see what his shipmates were on about.

Reed did not have to wait very long. Just a few hours after their exchange and just past Mars Mayweather suddenly jammed the ships engines into high gear, they roared in response and the ship lurched forward suddenly as Jupiter neared.

Hoshi yelped in surprise but quickly forced herself to be quiet when she saw Archer and Mayweather grinning, it had to be alright then. She dug her hands into the armsrest, digging marks that would remain in the plastic until the ship was decommissioned.

Enterprise rapidly gained speed. Roaring towards Jupiter and quickly exceeding warp factor four and climbing all the way up to warp factor five. As she flew by Jupiter Enterprise flashed a message to the UESN's Jupiter Station informing them that the ship had just breeched the speed record one of their ships had set the year before to much publicity. Archer took the opportunity to order an active sensor sweep of the Jovian system. Lighting up every ship present in a deliberate act that set off every alarm in the area.

Reed reported that a trio of Vulcan ships were also present in the system as Enterprise roared past, and that they had seemed to try to lock onto the ship with their own active sensors. But they had been to slow, by the time their sensors were warmed up they were pointing several million kilometres aft of the ship.

Travis kept up the speed until the Sol system was well behind them, leaving the UESN fleetbase and Earth in her wake. The ship slowed only as she left the Oort cloud, and then only to warp three point seven. Holding that speed until the engine room reported some overheating issues with the reactor. But Trip said it was nothing to serious, so the ship only dropped down to warp three point five.

It was quite a display of the speeds the ship was capable of. Enterprise had travelled well over half a lightyear in just under eight hours. An impressive feat and one that T'pol was careful to record in her constantly updating report. As the ship left the Sol system behind normal life quickly began, it being quite late Archer ordered dinner to be served and the crew given a moment to decompress.

Part two

It had been over a week, Enterprise was halfway through with her trip to Vulcan and in Archers opinion it could not be over soon enough. The Vulcans had been a constant nuisance, continually wanting a tour of different parts of the ship. Asking about her capabilities and generally doing their level best to discover her secrets.

Ambassador Fel meanwhile, Earths replacemet ambassador to Vulcan, made the trip even more of a headache by constantly getting in the way, asking questions, demanding to speak with Archer only for her to ask him simple questions. His favourite being how to adjust the lighting in her quarters, something anyone else on the ship could have done just as easily.

Enterprise also had a few troubles of her own. Being a new ship there was still a few problems to be worked out, some defective parts to be replaced such as malfunctioning lighting elements and haywire environmental controls, and quirks of the ship to be discovered. Perhaps the worst of these issues being when the gravity on C deck had failed without warning, Archer had phoned Trip from the shower and been nearly injured when it was turned back on. A drop of two metres onto the deck had not been fun. Fortunately no one else had been injured in the mishap and the Vulcans remained blissfully ignorant that it had even happened.

It had not been all bad however, Archer was finding that he absolutely loved the ship. Enterprise was a masterpiece of design and every waking moment he was not being hounded by politicians or Vulcans he enjoyed himself immensely.

He tested the ships systems extensively in the first number of days. Making a number of stops to ensure that the ships sensors worked, or that other systems would work properly. He even gave Reed the chance to test the ships "defensive systems" by stopping on the fourth day of the journey for some target practice against a passing meteorite. It took a salvo of missiles and a blast of laser fire for the half kilometre wide ball of rock and ice to explode, but it was quite the lightshow.

The ship was continuing on its course now, all tests Archer could think of having been concluded already, and a routine was forming. Archer sat on the bridge for the first eight hours of the day, with first Travis and then Malcom taking shifts overseeing the ship. Trip spent most of his time in the engine room and elsewhere, occasionally Hoshi would have a go at commanding the ship for awhile, though she still was not comfortable with that degree of authority.

The Vulcans had not been idle either. Over the last few days they had taken repeated tours of the ship, often with Archer leading them through the engine rooms, computer cores and weapons. In groups of just two or three at a time they asked an endless series of questions regarding the ships systems, speed and capabilities. Archer did his best to give as vague answers as he could without stooping to outright lies.

The rest of the ships officers were far less concerned about lying and even said outright impossibilities when asked about Enterprise. Trip was perhaps the worst. On one occasion answering that Enterprise could achieve warp factor seven and hold that speed for nine years without refuelling when asked about the ships speed.

Fortunately the Vulcans seemed unwilling to stoop to quite the level that Archer had anticipated. Never being caught or even suspected of attempting to hack into the ships computers directly. It was not something they were not entirely unfamiliar with, the Chicago scandal of a decade prior being still fresh in everyone's mind. And Archer was certain to make sure that evidence of hacking had been looked for.

Overall Archer was finding these Vulcans far less intrusive and difficult than they had anticipated. Even ambassador Soval was proving to be less of a nuisance than he had initially believed. He was perhaps less than a problem than ambassador Fel and her staff which was constantly in his way and asking an endless series of questions and difficulties. That did not mean he was enjoying it, but he was managing through it.

If Archer had learned that just on the edge of Vulcan space there lay in wait a cruiser of the Deik'lavas class which had stationed itself along Enterises projected course with the intention of ambushing her he would have suddenly found any good will he had towards Vulcans evaporate.

The ship was part of a mission organized by a reactionary element within the navy which was convinced that they needed gain as much intelligence on the E-class ships as possible. Even resorting to force to accomplish their goals.

Captain Cho'kol and his ship the Arakas were only a part of the plan however. The anchor by which the other two parts of the planned heist were dependent upon. Prior to the ships departure there was concern raised of how unstable Vulcan scientists believed the vessels warp field to be that was passed onto the UESPA and UE government. It was ignored, but when the ship went missing it would provide a convenient reason to explain why the ship was lost.

The third element of the plan involved planted agents in ambassador Soval's own staff that would cripple the ships engines and attempt to hack her computers to stop the vessel from either attempting to escape, or fight back.

The plan was necessary, at least Cho'kol and others felt it was. Earth could not be allowed to usurp Vulcan's position as the preeminent technological power in the galaxy, they had possessed warp flight for a scant few centuries while Vulcan had possessed it for close to two millennium. Humans were also dangerous, having nearly destroyed themselves before Vulcan stepped in and stabilized the situation on Earth, delivering huge quantities of relief supplies in the process and rebuilding the planets shattered environment.

"It will be another day before the Earth ship arrives," Cho'kol said as an opening to the mornings officer meeting. He looked around at everyone and saw that he had their complete attention. "Before they get here I want our sensor nets fully assembled so we have the best coverage of the system possible, missing them is not an option."

He looked down at his board. "We also need to be certain to look for the signal from those aboard the Earth ship loyal to our cause. If they fail however I am willing to resort to the use of force."

Seeing his words had registered he continued with the briefing. Receiving reports and asking questions about the ships status like any captain would. Enterprise was forgotten for the moment. All in the room knew everything there was to know and did not need to be reminded of anything, they were Vulcans afterall and possessed perfect memories.

"This conduit is the primary feedpoint for the port nacelle is it not?" Selvek asked as he and his party of three were led through the twisting corridors of Enterprises aft sections.

"Yes I believe it is," Travis answered. He was getting tired, he had just spent eight hours on the bridge and had been looking forward to a bit of rest, only for captain Archer to ask him as he had been about to get to the lift to give these three Vulcans a quick tour of the ship.

"And it feeds directly into the main reactor?" Selvek asked.

"I would have to ask Tucker, but I believe that is true," Travis shifted in his stance and leaned against the bulkhead.

"Would that not be a problem should there be a power bleedback?" Another Vulcan asked. "Would that not run the possibility of disabling or even destroying the vessel?"

Travis did know the answer to this question. "Actually the reactor has shutoffs in the injectors to the conduits that will stop any plasma feedback into the reactor and shunt it off harmlessly."

The Vulcan that had asked the question seemed to mull over this for a moment. "But the ship would be unable to attain warp speeds then would it not? Would the conduit to be warped for further use?"

Travis nodded. "Unfortunatlely yes," he wondered for a moment why three Vulcans were this interested in the plasma conduits of the Enterprise.

Apparently catching Travis's thought the third Vulcan piped up, "Vulcan vessels have several failsafes such as this and the plasma conduits themselves are easily replaceable," he said with an air of superiority.

Travis was not enough of an expert on Enterprises' technical specification to give an answer to this, but he was certain that whatever the Vulcans used it was inferior to whatever was fitted aboard his ship. Doing his best to ignore the slight against his ship he carried on with the tour. Finally he finished the tour a few hours later and went to bed.

T'pol was waiting when Selvek and his team returned for them in the shared common room between their quarters. "Have you anything to report?" She asked as the doors cycled shut behind them.

Selvek nodded. "Nothing of use," Selvek said, sitting down on the couch across from T'pol he noted that she was not in the least bit surprised.

"The humans have proven remarkably capable of keeping us in the dark about the capabilities of the ship. I must say I am impressed by that, though frustrated." T'pol slid a notepad over to him. "Anything you noted should be written down, we need as thorough a report as possible."

Selvek nodded, he was well aware of the necessity to keep records of their tour of the ship. Even if they did not find any useful information, at least anything he could share with T'pol.

He finished his report in a few minutes and handed it over to T'pol, who read through it and signed her approval of it before setting it on a pile of similar reports. She was growing frustrated at the lack of anything useful to report. Watching her Selvek had a slight pang of guilt for not being entirely truthful with her. But logically she would not be harmed by what she did not know.

He left a short time later and went to bed. Leaving T'pol alone to think over what she had observed. She knew Selvek was not being entirely truthful with her. His body language, though well hidden, showed some guilt over something. But she had no idea just what he was not telling her. It was not like looking at the ship and trying to find out what made it work the way it did had a lot of room for secrets.

On a whim, if Vulcans had whims, T'pol looked through Selvek's personal file. It showed nothing terribly out of the ordinary. He had served with ambassador Soval for a few years after he had gotten out of the navy. He went to school at a prestigious university and graduated in the top tiers of his class.

But then as she looked a little more in depth his record began to stand out a little more. For one he was well known as being somewhat prejudiced against humans. Viewing them as primitive and in need of help. He had been reprimanded repeatedly for expressing such views, even to humans.

But the thing that raised a red flag to T'pol was Selveks service in the military. She knew from experience that most military records were freely available and easy to follow. Consisting of simple lines regarding where an individual worked and for how long, and in what capacity.

But Selvek's records held none of that. Rather they were very short and held gaping holes in their records, times amounting to almost a decade, where the record read only as intelligence. This meant for certain that he had been involved in secret missions, and not in a sideline capacity like analyst. Rather he had served likely as an operator or agent.

Often those who had served in the intelligence community were never fully out, often being used for other tasks when the situation presented itself. Could he be on such a mission now?

"You believe him to be on some form of secret mission?" Soval asked, he had listened quietly as T'pol explained her theory, but it was clear that he had his doubts.

"Yes I do think that is a possibility." She handed him a sheaf of papers she had printed out. "Our database says as much here," she gestured at the second page of the report. Soval's eyebrows raised as he looked over that.

It was standard practice to copy all data stored in embassy computers when an ambassador left his post, granted this was never intended for use in this manner, but that being said Soval was glad that she had.

"Keep an eye on Selvek if you would." He ordered and set the document down. He would have to think about it and ponder what he could be doing. There was a good possibility that whatever it was it was it had the potential to end in a huge embarrassment for Vulcan if it went wrong.

Opinion on Earth towards Vulcan had shifted a lot in the recent decade, with many coming to view Vulcan as deliberately holding Earth back to ensure its dominance. It was a view captain Archer likely shared. Whether it was true or not was not up to Soval to say.

Two days later and the ship had continued along its course to Vulcan without incident. Archer had ordered another string of speed and endurance tests to be conducted. Bringing Enterprise up to warp factor four point seven for a full two minutes before he was forced to slow down due to structural stresses on the ships hull.

T'pol had continued on her investigation of Selvik, so far she had found very little. But that did not mean she had come up empty. Far from it. Instead she was all but certain that Selvik had been activated by intelligence for an operation designed to properly spy out Enterprise. Though she was unable to come to a proper conclusion as to the end of the operation.

In order to find more information T'pol had begun to backtrack on Selvek's movements. This had begun with a very cursory glance into his quarters, but that yielded nothing. Not to be unexpected if the man had any training.

She had next looked through every report that he had filed and begun to take similar tours of the ship, by herself as she did not want to attract any attention from the remainder of the ambassadors staff. She was however certain to keep Soval informed as to her movements and discoveries.

Currently she had just gone on two separate tours of the vessel, the first time she had been unable to have the same man give the tour as had given one to Selvek, the ships engineer Charles Tucker giving it instead. However, just a few hours later Travis Mayweather had become available and so he had consented to give her a tour of the ship.

She did not know what she expected to find out, the humans had been very guarded in their answers and no member one else had managed to find anything of importance, why would Selvek be any different.

T'pol then made a leap of logic and decided that even if Selvek were as careful as he could be with his movements so as to avoid discovery with the other Vulcans he would likely not be as careful with the humans. Afterall the two seldom spoke socially, their interactions confined to tours and passing conversations.

She thus decided to be very open about her intentions. She asked Travis directly to give her an account of Selvek's actions, everything he and his party said and everywhere that he took them. She did not however reveal just why she wanted him to do so.

"This was about when the three of them decided they had seen enough," Travis said standing beside in the middle of the hallway. T'pol looked around wondering what the other had seen that he considered to be useful.

"Here?" She asked beginning to feel almost like the helmsman was fooling her.

"Yes, I thought it was weird to," Travis could tell that T'pol had her doubts but wanted to make it clear he was being entirely truthful. Her honesty with him earlier had compelled him to do the same.

He gestured to the plasma conduit and shrugged. "Asked a bunch of questions about the conduit here and then we moved on for maybe five minutes more before they said they were done."

The wheels in T'pol's mind began to turn. "Where does this lead?" She asked already having a good sense of what the answer would be.

Travis sighed as he struggled to remember what he had told the other Vulcans. "It leads to the warp nacelles from the main reactor. Its where they get the majority of their energy."

T'pol at once knew the major flaw in this design feature, it represented a critical weakpoint in the ships propulsion. Normally, even under battle conditions, this was not much of a problem. But then most starship designers did not take internal sabotage into consideration. "I need to speak with your captain," she said putting a few more pieces together. She did not yet have the entire puzzle assembled, but what she knew was alarming.

"You think that this Selvek is doing what?" Archer asked his head still spinning as he began to process the information ambassador Soval's aide had given him. The four of them, Archer and Travis on the human side, and ambassador Soval and an aide Archer did not know, were in the tiny captains office. A small space just off the port side of the bridge.

"Captain T'pol did not come to this conclusion in a vacuum. She has some evidence and it is enough that we decided to come to you immediately." Soval appeared sombre, behind him the aid, Archer could not recall her name, stood like a carved stature, face lacking emotion. Travis was a study in opposites.

"Whats on your mind Travis?" Archer asked wondering what he thought of all this, he had afterall been present for both the tour with the supposed spy and the womans conclusion that he intended sabotage.

Travis shifted uncomfortably on his feet, not liking all the attention suddenly directed at him. "Captain," he stuttered before seeming to call upon some inner strength. "Sir I think she is telling the truth," he said with much more confidence in his voice. "And even if she is wrong wouldn't it be better to be prepared and nothing to happen than to dismiss her suspicions and then have a disaster?"

Archer could not fault him on the argument. Whats more he believed her himself. Vulcans were not well known for subterfuge of this sort. They would lie, hide information and forget to inform when it suited them. But lying that one of their own staff was plotting to cripple Enterprise for some nefarious purpose, weakening their own position substantially in the process, did not seem to be within their typical SOP.

"What do you propose we do about this?" He asked suddenly deciding, for the moment, to trust the Vulcans. "I will have to inform my crew about this," he said leaving no room in his tone for debate about this. "If we are to counter whatever they plan we will need help."

"Agreed," Soval said after seeming on the verge of arguing for a second. But the human brought up a good point. And, it was not as if there was much chance of word getting to Selvek via the humans. Still, some precautions needed to be taken.

"I would ask though that not every crew member is informed, I doubt your crew would tell Selvek, but they may tip him off that something is up if they become more hostile and guarded around him."

Again Archer had to concede that the ambassador had a point. "I will tell my officers, chief engineer and weapons specialist, and a few others as there is a need," he said finally. Soval nodded while the female maintained her statue like non-expression. Travis gulped loudly beside her.

"Now," Soval's voice was quiet, he sounded as if he were plotting a conspiracy. "The only question we must ask ourselves now if what we will do to stop your ship from being damaged or potentially destroyed." He looked around at Travis and Archer, neither man was forthcoming with an idea.

Finally T'pol spoke up and laid out a simple plan that required very little action on anyones part but stood the maximum chance of preventing any plot by Selvek. Its lack of action also served to avoid making him and any members of the conspiracy.

It was sound, simple and likely effective. Archer and Soval both readily agreed and that was that. As the two Vulcans turned to leave though a last nagging thought struck Archer.

"Ambassador," he asked rising from his desk, "I have just one last question if you would care to answer it for me."

Soval wore an expression of worry for just a moment before it disappeared beneath his usual tight emotional control. "You may ask it," he said his voice steady.

Archer took a moment to think over the proper wording for what he wanted to say before deciding it was best just to ask. "Why," he began, "do you think that you were not informed of this plan as Vulcans senior official aboard? Isnt it standard Vulcan procedure to do so on intelligence gathering operations?"

"I am shocked at your detailed knowledge of my governments intelligence organizations standard procedures captain," Soval said completely deadpan. He mulled over Archers words for a moment before he answered.

"To be honest with you captain that is a question that has been bothering the corners of my mind since T'pol revealed her suspicions to me." He shrugged slightly. "Perhaps I no longer enjoy the trust I once thought I did."

With that he left, Travis followed. Leaving a stunned Archer alone to think about what this could mean. As he saw things it could either go exceptionally well, with a major boost in the UE's position with Vulcan. Or it could go extremely badly, there was potential perhaps, depending on how high up this possible plot went, for a major souring of relations between the two powers. And humans were not as peace-loving as they let on, there would be demands for blood if something majorly bad happened to Enterprise.

Part three

"Remind me again why we trust them all the sudden?" Trip asked for what was probably the millionth time in the past three days. He been working almost nonstop for two of them to install a bypass line of conduit running past the primary junction and complaining the entire time.

When no one answered he continued. "I thought we were suspicious of the Vulcans because they wanted to discover how the ship worked, now we are working with them?"

"Some of them," Archer corrected, "and we are only working with some of them because others may want to sabotage the ship."

"No I get that, I really do." Trip took a moment to think of the proper wording for what he wanted to say. "Why are we working with them at all if we know some of them are probably planning to sabotage the ship? Why not keep all of them at arm's length and work on our own?"

Archer did not really have an answer, on the one hand it made sense that if ambassador Soval and his aide T'pol had come to him with the plot that they would be totally innocent. On the other hand however how could he be certain that they weren't a part of the plan? Or that there was a plot at all?

"Because they know just about as much about what is going on as us and are better placed to uncover additional information," Archer said trying his best to get any doubts out of his voice and to make it seem that he wasn't open to any argument on the subject.

Truthfully this wasn't something he had a great deal of experience with. Archer was a scientist and explorer first and foremost, in his mind at least. High stakes politics and spy craft were incredibly far outside of his comfort zone."

Trip seemed to accept this, although he grumbled slightly before going back to work. Deciding it best to let him be Archer turned to Reed at the weapons station, "how goes it?" He asked noting the report already coming his way. Malcoms military promptness and preparedness were really beginning to get on his nerves.

"Fairly well sir," he said looking around at his instruments. "Of course, it would be better if we knew more about what was being planned, that way I would be able to prepare more specifically, rather than a general plan for multiple eventualities as I have done."

Archer nodded not really paying attention as he read through the four page report, Malcom continued, seemingly taking no account of his captain. "I would also feel a little better if our weapons were a little harder hitting, but that decision was not up to me."

Archer agreed with him on account of the ships weapons. The ship, while the best armed ship in the UESPA, still fell well below the standards of a proper warship. She was armed with six missile silos, two launchers and three laser cannons. She was also armoured quite well for a civilian vessel, with polarised hull plating and reinforced structural frames.

But she was still not a warship. Her lasers for instance were only short ranged low powers systems suitable for little other than interception of incoming enemy fire. Her six missile silos carried only defensive missiles in racks of nine, while her two tubes could only fire probes and general purpose defence/offensive missiles of medium range only. In any stand up match against a properly outfitted cruiser she would lose, her speed was her only trump card and it looked like the Vulcans were plotting to take that away.

The report reiterated this point strongly, advocating that in the event that the ship encountered a hostile force she was to avoid direct confrontation at all costs and only use her defensive systems to open an avenue of escape.

Archer signed off on the report, a formality Reed insisted on. It was not good enough that the captain had seen it, he had to have signed it to show that he had seen it. Yet another little military practice that irritated Archer and most of the rest of the ships crew, and the lack of which endlessly perplexed the ships scant UESN compliment.

T'pol walked in just as Reed accepted the report and looked around the bridge before speaking. "Captain, is this a good time to talk?" She asked standing ramrod straight just beside the turbolift.

Archer turned his head, the woman was dressed in the usual Vulcan service dress, tight fitting but flexible her attire left little to the imagination, but would protect the wearer in the event of a loss of pressure, also providing limited defence against radiation and variations in temperature.

In Archers mind the uniform just looked like pyjamas, but it was still a rather pointed contrast in the technological levels between the two nations, despite the advances Enterprise represented.

T'pol noticed Archers look and asked again, somewhat sheepishly Archer was snapped back into the present. "Yes," he said, "whats up?"

"Up?" T'pol asked puzzled at what direction had to do with her.

"What is it you want to talk about?" Archer said, trying again. This time T'pol seemed to understand what he was saying.

"Sir how far away are we from Vulcan territory?" She asked looking at the bridge's forward display screen. It was currently showing a view of the space ahead of them. With Enterprises' speed, power and fuel consumption and heading. It did not show the ships position however.

Archer honestly did not know the answer to that, he had a general idea that Enterprise was just a few hours away from the Vulcan border, but he did not know exactly how close the ship was in terms of distance. He looked over at the helm.

"Travis how close are we to the Vulcan border?" He asked. The helmsman wheeled around and thought for a moment before he answered.

"About five hours sir at our current speed, that amounts to about two lightyears." Travis looked back at T'pol, "would you like to see my flight data?" He asked. He had no problem dealing with the Vulcans and was developing a rather good relationship with T'pol in particular.

"I would appreciate it mister Mayweather," T'pol said, looking to Archer she asked, "may I?"

"Please do," Archer said gesturing to the helm. It was weird, before all this had went down the thought of sharing the flight data from Enterprise with a Vulcan would have been insane to him, now, now it was a fairly simple little thing.

T'pol walked over and looked through the ships flight data, including her projected path into Vulcan space. She stood up and turned to Archer, a curious expression on her face.

"What is it?" Archer asked wondering just what was going on and why she seemed so concerned.

"Nothing captain," T'pol said. "Just that the ship is entering into Vulcan territory along a fairly predictable path. Perhaps it would be wise to move the ships entry into another area where there will likely be less possibility of being intercepted by any Vulcan ships."

Archer honestly had not considered the possibility. "Do you think that there is a possibility of there being a ship waiting for us?" He asked.

Rather than answer T'pol produced a drive and handed it to Archer, who looked at it, and then her. "This drive contains copied information from Selvek's personal computer, do not inform ambassador Soval as this is a serious breech of our laws and personal privacy."

Archer nodded, this represented a serious breech of even Earths laws, he was surprised that T'pol would have done this. "What does it contain?" He asked deciding to move on and pass by her breech of laws.

"Coordinates and calculations made by Selvek which correspond to a location near where the ship was going to enter Vulcan territory, I can only conclude that this means we will be intercepted by one of our own warships."

Archer blanched. "Well we know what to prepare for," he said turning white. If the data in the drive was what T'pol said it was, a location where the ship would be intercepted, then it would not be hard to avoid it and enter Vulcan territory from a different location.

But that was assuming that it involved only one ship. If the apparent plan to seize Enterprise involved more than one starship, or if the Vulcans had FTL sensors available, then it would be still possible for the ship to be intercepted.

Archer had considered turning back for Earth and scratching the entire mission. But then he would have to answer to both the government and director Forrest. And even with the evidence they had so far collected it would likely not be enough to justify, in their eyes, the ship turning back. And so, against his gut, he had accepted T'pol's logic that any plot against Enterprise would involve only one ship.

"Travis," Archer said making a decision. The helmsman turned and smiled.

"Already working on a new course that will put our point of entry into Vulcan space several AU away from our previous course," he said. He was getting to be rather good at anticipating the orders of his captain.

Archer nodded and shrugged at Trip who was finding the whole situation rather funny. Over the last few days he had joked that it was almost like Archer did not need to every once come to the bridge because Travis could read his mind as to where he wanted the ship to go.

The ship shuddered as her course was adjusted, the warp bubble around the ship reforming slightly to create sufficient drift on one side that the vessel began to turn along the new course, the whole thing, in the words of Travis, was done almost like a rudder on a ship. It was much superior to the typical method of turning which involved firing impulse engines and forcing the ship on a new direction, Enterprise's turning circle was many times smaller as a result and the ship wasted even less precious fuel as a happy by product.

"Well? Have you seen anything yet?"Cho'kol said to his sensor operator. He was getting impatient and finding it harder and harder to control the emotion as the clock ticked down. If they missed their guess as to Enterprise's point of entry into Vulcan space then they would fail in their mission.

"Nothing yet sir, likely they are still outside our sensor range," the operator said with surprising calm. Normally men as junior as him had not yet mastered the control that he had.

Cho'kol huffed. The entire point of bringing along the subspace sensor ship the Vekia was that she had much increased sensor range over those carried by Arakas. So far this extended sensor range, up to half a lightyear, had yet to prove to have any worth.

"Keep on it then," Cho'kol ordered, unnecessarily he knew but then he had to give some form of order for the record. The sensor operator, tied into the sensors aboard Vekia, nodded but otherwise said nothing.

"We cant miss the Earth ship," Cho'kol muttered under his breath as he stared out at the darkness around the Arakas.

"Sir…" Malcom said suddenly from his station. The ship was now just a few minutes from Vulcan space and would soon penetrate along the new route set by Mayweather.

"What is it Malcom?" Archer asked his voice tense. T'pol he noted, as well as Ambassador Soval, began to make their way to the weapons station, but stopped quickly.

"Sir we are being pinged by a subspace signal," Reed reported.

"Can you elaborate?" Soval asked.

Reed looked at the Vulcan for a second and then at Archer before he answered. "Sir, it is not a communications signal, it registers to high. I think it's a sensor beam."

Someone, Archer thought Pavel Maritislaw, the ships sensor operator, swore in a language Archer did not understand. Probably Polish if it was Martislaw. "Full stop!" Archer ordered. Around him alarms blared as the ship began to rapidly decelerate from warp factor three point six down to a complete stop, the entire operation would take roughly six minutes if Travis worked the ship to her limits.

"Better send a team down to the Vulcan quarters and confirm that everyone is there," Archer said to Reed as the deck beneath his feet lurched and metal screamed from the stresses it was being put through. Reed worked quickly and reported that it was done just a moment later.

"The Earth ship has began to decelerate rapidly sir," the sensor operator said his voice suddenly going tense. Cho'kol angrily clenched his fists but gave no other outward indication of the rage he was feeling.

He had already berated the man for missing the ship until it was just under five billion kilometres. And now apparently the ship had detected the sensor beam from Vekia and begun to slow.

"Get a fix on their location and relay it to the helm!" Cho'kol ordered deciding to carry on with the plan even if the Earth ship slowed just outside of Vulcan space. He prayed that Selvek and his team would be able to accomplish their part of the mission or this could quickly turn into a massive problem.

"The ship is slowing!" Selvek said to the other members of his intelligence team. He had worked since arriving on a carefully timed and intricate plan to cripple the ship. Now it looked like that plan was impossible, he had not intended to move into action until the ship was well within Vulcan space. Now it looked like he had no choice, something was obviously wrong.

The two others in his team of three immediately moved to the door of their quarters to begin their plan. Selvek moved to the cubby where he had stashed a few small arms and detonators. He swore, they were not there.

"They were here just an hour ago!" One of the others said all his panic knocking down his walls to show plainly on his face.

"T'pol and the ambassador were in here just a few minutes ago," the other said. "You do not think?"

"I do, and when this is over we will deal with them," Selvek said brushing past the missing weapons and coming to the logical conclusion that their plot had been discovered, though he dismissed the idea that either the ambassador or his assistant had told the humans. It would damage Vulcans position to much he knew.

From his boot he produced a small sidearm, a simple plasma pistol. The weapon had a power cell sufficient for just a dozen shots on kill and perhaps triple that on stun. He set it to kill. "Lets go," he ordered gesturing to the door. Hesitantly the others followed him.

The door opened and he and his team rushed out, the sound of running footsteps met them just a few metres outside their room and without even caring who it was Selvek began to fire, hitting one of the humans, a medium height man in the light body armour used by the Colonial Rangers, though he was clearly a crewmember of the ship. He went down and the others did their best to form a line, taking cover where they could. It was clear they were not professional shipboard security, their movements were choppy and amateurish, but they were much better armed than Selvek.

"Move!" He shouted over the din of weapons fire, surprisingly accurate as one of his team went down, a gaping wound in his shoulder, the humans were using projectile weapons, primitive.

He and the man not wounded ran off in the general direction of the power conduit where they would cripple the ship. Selvek was now wondering if the ambassador had told the humans, or if the security were just there to arrest the ambassador. Either way they needed to finish their mission.

"Sir I have weapons fire near the Vulcan quarters!" Reed shouted in surprise. Archer turned.

"I thought that you grabbed their weapons," he said to T'pol.

"Obviously I missed a few," she said completely deadpan.

"I have one wounded, though he will live and it looked like at least one of the Vulcans was hit, the team asks if they should pursue." Reeds hands were flying across his board as he initiated the ships scant anti-boarding procedures.

"No!" Archer shouted over the new alarms. "I want the team to lock down the Vulcans in their cabins, we can catch them as they near the conduit," Archer felt odd giving these orders, a sudden rush of adrenaline and excitement where there ought to be panic. He was enjoying this. An odd thought.

His crew raced to carry out his orders as chaos engulfed the bridge, controlled and subdued. But chaos nonetheless. It was interesting to watch, despite a formal lack of training for such events they moved well and carried out their tasks efficiently.

Efficiency could not be said to be a trait shared by the crew of the Arak's bridge crew. Captain Cho'kol had been giving orders in a rush of raised voice and furious pacing. The plan was coming apart and he was not doing a good job of hiding it from his men. They were growing nervous and beginning to make mistakes.

The cruiser had begun the lumbering turn that would bring her on an intercept with Enterprise, her enormous bulk and sluggish handling making this an agonizing and painful operation.

Cho'kol grabbed onto the railing as the ships gravity lurched in response to the stresses it was being put through. The movement passed and normal gravity resumed. A tactical readout on the forward viewscreen was showing the relative positions of the border, Arakas, Enterprise and the Vekia. The Earth ship was gaining ground rapidly. Cho'kol had no idea of its maximum speed, but intelligence guessed it to be just below or just above that of his own ship. He needed to catch her before she was to far away.

Selvek let out a curse in Helorig that would have made a person with almost complete emotional control blush as another bullet tore just past his head. He had initially been glad that the humans were using projectile weapons as that would force them to be careful not to accidentally hit something important. But he had quickly observed that the weapons disintegrated on impact with a hard surface, like a ships bulkhead, but remained intact when entering a soft object, like a Vulcan.

Another volley followed the first round and soon Selvek was covering himself to avoid getting any shrapnel in his eyes. He would have returned fire except that his own weapon was now running critically low on power and as he did not have a detonator he would need to use his weapon to take out the power conduit.

He was still working on the assumption that the humans had no idea of his target, but still he was having difficulty getting there. Seemingly around every corner there was another team of armed crew blocking his path. He and his assistant had managed to take a pair of pistols from some of them, but now the weapons were also running out of ammunition. And the likelihood of getting more was rapidly dwindling.

Selvek saw an opening and with a shout fired off the last three rounds from his pistol, catching one of the humans in the chest, sending her to the ground with a gaping chest wound and a bloodcurdling scream. He brushed past the other man, stealing his gun and firing behind him.

His surviving team member was not so lucky. Stunned as Selvek broke out the humans behind them had been ready for him and filled the Vulcan with at least seven bullets before he fell to the floor in a heap. Selvek did not look back, he had work to do.

"Sir all sections report ready for jump to warp!" The helmsman reported much to the relief of Cho'kol, they were rapidly loosing a window where they could intercept the Earth vessel.

"What are you waiting for?" He bit out," get the ship to warp!"

Selvek had nearly made it, his teammate had managed to continue fighting after going down, firing his five remaining rounds and delaying the humans just long enough to allow Selvek to temporarily evade their grasp.

It was just a few more metres now, he grabbed his pistol and set the weapon to overload, the initial plan had been to set the detonator to a timed delay and escape the ship via an escape pod to be collected by the Arakas after Enterprise was theirs. Now it was clear that survival was no longer an option.

Selvek had not problems with death. He knew that he had done his best to serve the state and that he had led a good life, accomplishing much in his admittedly short lifetime.

He had just finished setting the weapon to overload when a new round of bullets began to come his way. Stunned and kicking himself for not hearing the humans approach he blindly ran forward around a corner.

It was a mistake. A line of humans, all armed, met him and opened fire. Catching Selvek at least nine times with their fire and sending him to the ground, as he fell he released the pistol, its trigger depressing and beginning the overload.

Trip put his gun down, tossing it aside in disgust. He was not a killer and the knowledge that he had just possibly shot a fellow being made him almost sick.

He held back his breakfast and took a deep breath, his ears were ringing from the gunfire. Or where they? The noise was growing louder, a loud dinging that seemed to be emanating ahead of him. Looking over at the Vulcan's corpse Trip expected to see a grenade or something, but fortunately did not.

He did see a sidearm though, a small energy weapon of obvious Vulcan manufacture. The teams had reported that he was armed initially with such a weapon. As Trip walked closer he could see that it was flashing, red.

"Get outta here!" He screamed, he knew enough about energy weapons to know when one was about to blow up. His team scurried for cover and he himself dove around a corner just before the weapon detonated.

Enterprise bucked around for a moment before her ride smoothened for a moment. Hoshi had just time enough to breath a sigh of relief before the ship suddenly dropped out of warp, sending all aboard off in every direction but down. Lights flickered and gravity failed as alarms screeched and moaned throughout the ship.

"Sir the earth vessel has just dropped out of warp!" The sensor operator reported, Cho'kol grinned. _Finally! _He thought, it seemed the plan was salvageable after all. "Time to intercept?" He asked.

"Twelve minutes," came the reply.

"They aren't going anywhere," Cho'kol said with a decidedly un-Vulcan grin.

"Damage report?" Archer asked deciding it was better to know the state his ship was in before asking why it was in that state.

Malcom looked across his board before giving a report. "It looks like the nacelles suddenly lost power sir, at the moment I cant say for certain why."

Archer had a pretty good idea, "get Trip!" He said moving up to the helm console and helping pick Travis off the deck. "Are you alright?" He asked.

"Fine sir, never better," Travis said as he gingerly tried out his left arm. His face puckered as he flexed it, but it seemed to be only bruised.

Archer looked at the rest of his crew, noting that ambassador Soval and T'pol were fine. He was surprised to see Hoshi still in her seat. "What?" She asked when she saw him looking at her.

He shrugged, "I expected you to be on the ground honestly," he said.

"I have a tight grip," Hoshi replied lifting her hands off of her chair to reveal a new series of claw marks in the leather. Despite his present circumstances Archer found himself laughing.

"Captain, we failed sir." Trips tone was sombre. He looked around at his people, fortunately no one had been killed, or even seriously injured in the explosion, just minor injuries.

"No need to apologize Trip, just glad you guys are alright," there was relief in Archers voice. "How bad is it?" He asked.

"Don't know for sure captain," Trip said. He had not really had time to look at the damage to the plasma coil, he had been busy ducking away from an explosion and then sliding around the deck as the ship dropped suddenly from warp.

"Well let me know when you have an estimate to finish repairs, there is still at least one Vulcan ship around," Archer said, in the background Trip could hear Reed giving a full report on the damage the ship had taken.

"Lets get to work!" Trip shouted to get everyone's attention. Once he was certain everyone was looking at him he continued. "We need to get the ship back to warp as soon as possible, the captains depending on us, lets go!"

Everyone that could moved to comply. Racing to exchange rifles with tools and diagnostics equipment. Trip began a quick visual inspection of the damage to the conduit, hoping it was not something to serious.

"I want to come in as close to them as possible," Cho'kol said as he leaned in close to the helmsman. The whine of the ships engines was defeaning as the Arakas clawed her way up to warp three point five. It would only get worse as the ship continued to accelerate, but fortunately she would have to begin slowing down soon to avoid overshooting the earth ship.

Rather than answer the helmsman nodded and worked his controls. The ship shuddered in response and Cho'kol noted that the whine of the engines was beginning to die down. If only slightly.

"Its not as bad as I thought, but its not good sir," Trip said. It had been five minutes since they had last spoken. In that time the ships chief operations officer had worked hurriedly to find the extent of the damage from the explosion.

"How bad is it?" Archer said a silent prayer that it would not be something that would need time in a spacedock.

There was a pause before Trip answered. "Fortunately the bastard did not destroy the whole thing when he turned himself into tiny bits. Looks from here like the blast only weakened the conduit in a small section and the computers shut down the plasma flow before it could get to bad."

"Can you fix it?" Archer asked hoping the answer would consist of three letters rather than two. Again there was a pause before Trip answered.

"Yes," he said finally to the relief of Archer, who drew an enormous sigh or relief.

"How long do you need?" He asked not caring particularly about the length of repairs, all that mattered was that the ship was not completely broken.

"Fifteen to twenty minutes and we should be good to go," Trip said much to the shock of Archer.

"Well he didn't do much damage at all then," he said.

"Well sir, its not that he didn't do a lot of damage," Trip said the old sarcasm creeping into his voice. "Its just that, well you happen to be blessed with the best engineer in the whole damned fleet!"

Archer did not doubt that, as the fleet at present had no one with Trips qualifications. But even with the quick repair time there was the question of when the Vulcans would make an appearance. He did not say that to Trip, no need to burden him with additional stress as he worked. But Archer knew he had better have a very good exit strategy for when the Vulcans came to him.

"Hurry," Archer said before signing off. He knew it was pointless to say that, but it made him feel better. Like he was doing something towards fixing the ship by uttering that single word.

Part Four

"Captain we are now out of warp sir, shall I have weapons brought to bear?" The ships tactical officer said as soon as the Arakas was back into realspace.

Cho'kol shook his head, "no," he said grimly. "The plan calls for us to attempt to board the Earth ship under the pretext of looking for a criminal among the ambassadors staff, we shall then seize the ship with our boarding party, that way it is hoped that the vessel will be as undamaged as possible for later examination."

The tactical officer, and really the entire bridge, nodded. In order to ensure the integrity of the plan it had been necessary for most of the ships crew to be kept in the dark about the finer points of the mission until they needed to know. Now they needed to know and Cho'kol was telling them.

"Shall I prepare a boarding party then?" The tactical officer was already moving to do so even as he asked for permission, Cho'kol nodded.

"Please do. I don't want to give them time to get any ideas into their minds." Cho'kol looked at the ships speed and course and sent some minor adjustments to the helm. They would need to be very careful if this plan was going to work.

"One big ship," Travis said, the first to speak since the Vulcan Deik'lavas class cruiser had come out of warp half an light second off Enterprises port bow.

"The vessels of this class are indeed rather large, though much of their volume is devoted to fuel." Ambassador Soval's voice flat, conversational and totally out of place in the tense environment of the bridge.

"Good grief that thing is huge," Archer said as if totally oblivious to Soval.

"What worries me is their armament, if they begin firing before we can get to warp we wont last very long." Malcom discretely checked the target lock on the vessels forward missile batteries. It wouldn't do much, but it was better than nothing and made him feel better.

All was quiet on the bridge for a moment before Hoshi spoke up. "Captain, they are hailing us," she said the worry and fear clear in her voice. She looked at Archer questioningly. "What should I do?"

Archer shrugged. "Put them on." If they wanted to talk then maybe he could keep them on the line long enough for the repairs to be completed. Hoshi worked her hands across the board and soon the comms fizzled to life.

"Earth vessel this is the Vulcan cruiser Arakas, captain Cho'kol speaking," a voice said with as much entitlement as Archer had ever heard from a Vulcan.

"Captain Johnathan Archer of the Enterprise," Archer answered back trying to sound as amicable as he could. "What can I do for you?" He asked.

"You can come to a full stop and accept a boarding team from my vessel," Cho'kol said a tough of anger in his voice. "We believe that three of the members of Ambassador Soval's staff have committed grievous crimes. We want them."

Archer could see where this was going, send over a boarding party to apprehend these fugitives, and then out of the shuttles pours enough armed men to take over the ship and capture her crew, allowing Enterprise to be captured nice and neatly. Fortunately this plan also had plenty of ways to delay it as conceivably the Vulcan captain would not want his shuttles to be fired upon the minute they left the ship.

"Why do you want them now?" Archer asked, putting as much dumb innocence in his voice as possible. "We are headed to your homeworld, why not just wait to get them when we arrive?"

Cho'kol did not seem to be in much of a mood for debate over this. "Their crimes are to serious to allow them any more time than necessary before their trail. Allow my boarding party to take them," he said with growing volume.

Archer looked back at Soval, who responded by raising one eyebrow and shrugging slightly. Archer signed to Hoshi to cut off audio for the moment and he raised Trip. "How much longer?" He asked once he had gotten ahold of his engineer.

"I need five minutes captain," Trip said, "just five minutes."

"You may not have that," Archer responded. "We have a Vulcan war cruiser off our bow that is well within weapons range talking about sending over a boarding party.

Trip hissed and nearly swore. "Understood, we will try our best," he finally managed to say before signing off.

"Travis get a readout of the nacells, I want us to warp the moment we are able," Archer said swinging back into his chair and motioning to Hoshi to turn the audio pickups back on.

"Captain I am not sure that we can do that," he said again going for the stupid but helpful human approach. "You see our small craft bay is rather cramped at the moment and we don't think our airlocks are compatible with yours."

"I am sending over the boarding party captain, if they encounter any difficulties I am sure that they will be overcome," Cho'kol said dryly. "And I would remind you not to underestimate who you are dealing with."

It was Archers turn to nearly swear. Clearly the Vulcan knew he was stalling, though he guessed that the man had no idea why. "Well its going to be a major embarrassment for you when your shuttles cant lock on to my ship," Archer said giving the vocal equivalent of throwing his arms up into the air.

"We will see captain, prepare to receive my men," Cho'kol said haughtily before signing off. Archer was immediately in action.

"How long until their boarding party reaches us?" He asked to no one in particular.

"Approximately two minutes assuming they launch immediately and proceed on a direct course," T'pol said. Archer was uncertain how she had come by that figure, but something told him it was accurate.

"Looks like that's precisely what they are doing," Travis announced a moment later. "Two small craft just left the Arakas' hangar and fired up their drives for a burn."

Archer looked at Travis's data and this time he could not keep from swearing. "Trip for the love of all that is holy in the universe hurry up!" He said, adopting one of his friends sayings rather than resort to further profanity.

"Captain the boarding party is away and reports all is normal," the operations officer announced calmly. Cho'kol nodded.

"Very good," he said. Despite the human captains best attempt his men would be aboard the ship in just a few minutes. He wondered for a moment why the captain had not said anything about their drop from warp. Perhaps he could have suggested that the perpetrators of the damage were the Vulcans Arakas was looking for?

It was a small thing, and something unlikely to cause Cho'kol any lack of sleep. Likely captain Archer had just been unwilling to admit to a Vulcan that his ship was not capable of achieving warp any longer.

"Time before our shuttles reach the Enterprise?" He asked his operations officer.

"Two minutes and eleven seconds," came the prompt reply.

"At last this mission is at an end," Cho'kol said a fierce gleam in his eye. "Are the holding cells ready to receive the ships crew?" He asked now turning to his tactical officer.

"They are," the man answered.

"Well I was a tad optimistic when I said five minutes captain," Trip said, from his tone of voice Archer could tell that he was rubbing his neck sheepishly.

"How much time do you need?" Archer asked with nothing else to say.

Trip took a minute to mull over his answer before speaking. "Could you give me eight more minutes?" He asked.

Archer looked over to Malcom and paused there. "Captain?" Reed asked puzzled.

"Is it safe to say that the Vulcan ship will not fire on us ambassador?" Archer asked without turning to face Soval.

The ambassadors eyes went wide as he realised what Archer was getting at, but he could see no other choice. "Unlikely yes captain, impossible no."

Archer seemed pleased with the answer. He could work with likely not far better than he could with definitely will. "How long before the shuttles reach us?" He asked.

"Forty seconds or so," Travis answered as puzzled as Reed.

"Okay, we haven't got much time," Archer said putting extra urgency into his voice, "here is my plan…"

"Ten seconds before the shuttles dock with Enterprise," the operations officer announced. Cho'kol was busily pacing the bridge waiting for the shuttles to dock. He turned just in time to see one of them blink off the tactical display followed by the second a moment later.

"What happened?" He asked, the possibility of sudden systems failure entering and exiting his mind almost instantaneously. He knew the answer.

"Enterprise has fired on the shuttles," the tactical officer announces, alarms blaring throughout the ship.

"Direct hit on their thrusters sir," Reed reported grimly. "They are intact but unable to move anywhere."

"Good shot Malcom!" Archer said. He had been clear that he did not want either shuttle to be destroyed outright. Killing two shuttles full of people would not go over well with either Vulcan, or Earth. Even if the shuttles occupants were going to take over the ship.

"Permission to fire the second volley?" Reed asked. Without hesitation Archer answered.

"Granted."

"Sir I am detecting launch signatures from Enterprise! They have fired on us!"

Cho'kol's head was spinning. Was Archer insane? Arakas possessed many times the diminutive Earth ships firepower and could keep up a furious barrage of fire for far longer than Enterprise just due to the amount of space she had to devote to magazines.

"How many?" He asked moving to his chair as the ship entered combat standing.

"Looks like six weapons signatures, all small to mid sized, likely a mixture of offensive/defensive missiles and a few defensive weapons to fly escort and shoot down our counter fire." The tactical officers voice sounded calm, controlled. Cho'kol envied him.

"Prepare to engage counter fire and plot a return volley!" Cho'kol said hastily before rethinking his orders. "Target their weapons systems with our lasers," he said a half a second later. "We cant destroy or damage the vessel to badly," he said.

The tactical officer snorted. Mission critical or not if he were in his captains place he would immediately let loose everything the ship had and vaporize the irritating little human vessel for daring to fire on a Vulcan warship. But he moved to comply with his captain orders regardless. He could always challenge his leadership after the fact in court.

"Sir the Arakas has destroyed out initial volley and is trying to get a weapons lock on us, possibly for their lasers," Reed shouted.

"Launch scramblers and get us out of here!" Archer snapped, in response the ship shuddered slightly as another pair of missiles escaped the ships tubes and the thrusters engaged. Warp drive or no Enterprise could still outrun the Vulcan at impulse, and outturn her to. If she wanted to fire her lasers on the ship then she would have to work to get a suitable target lock on her.

As Enterprise began her turn her missiles screamed towards the Arakas, miniature impulse drives propelling the devices at half the speed of light down the gullet of the larger warship. Arakas's impressive array of sensors detected the missiles moments after they left Enterprise's tubes, but struggled to get a homing lock for a few seconds more, all the while the weapons drew steadily closer to the big Vulcan.

There was no question on if the weapons would be destroyed or not. Designed to launch volleys consisting of upwards of a dozen missiles at once Arakas was capable of defending herself against an equal number of weapons. A mere two missiles gave her defensive batteries no trouble at all in normal circumstances.

But these were not normal missiles, scramblers, or Electromagnetic Spectral Distortion Device, ESDD for short, were designed to detonate a small nuclear device several thousand kilometres from the target vessel, causing no damage due to the weapons usually small size. However the warhead was messy, shooting out far more radiation and wasted energy than the latest X-Ray weapons used in most modern missiles. The wasted energy and radiation would confuse sensors and make gaining an effective target lock nearly impossible for an enemy ship.

As the weapons were omni-directional they also confused a launching vessels targeting systems, though this was not usually a problem as scramblers were used most often by vessels looking to evade combat. As Enterprise was doing now.

"Get this mess off my scopes!" The sensor operator screamed as alarms wailed throughout the Arakas. The scramblers deployed by the Enterprise had proven surprisingly effective, far more so than intelligence had guessed.

"Push through all this and get a positive lock on the Enterprise!" Captain Cho'kol ordered. It was clear that the mission was now impossible. Somehow Enterprise had known of the plot to capture her and was now a priority target.

Cho'kol doubted that the ship would be able to make it to warp again, Selvek must have managed to knock out her drive system somehow, he had accomplished at least that much. But, after seeing what the ship was capable of he would not doubt it if it did manage to jump to warp again. And that meant it had to be destroyed.

Even if the ship headed back to Earth immediately after jumping to warp rather than proceed onward to Vulcan she would bring news of their attempted capture to their government, which would in turn demand an accounting from the Assembly, which had no idea that this operation was being carried out. Not that such an answer would be acceptable to the furious United Earth.

The results, not just for UE-Vulcan relations, but for the relationship between the addembly and its military, would be disastrous. Currently the navy was allowed broad and far reaching autonomy in how it used its assets, manned its ships and operated in the frontier. If it was learned that the navy had carried out a secret mission without the approval of the Assembly heads would roll. Among them Cho'kols and much of the admiralty.

The Arakas cleared the debris field caused by the scramblers and her sensors began to sweep the space in front of her for the Enterprise. They found the ship in moments, several light seconds ahead of them and busily making all manner of evasive manoeuvres. Not that they would do the ship much good against the arsenal of the Arakas.

Cho'kol waited until the sensors had a good lock on the ship, clearing the outer edges of the scramblers field, before ordering six missiles with a further four flanking counter missiles as escorts to be loaded into the tubes. "Fire," he said as soon as they were loaded.

"I have ten weapons signatures emanating from the Vulcan cruiser sir!" Reed shouted suddenly. "Looks like six ship killers and four defending counter missiles."

"Confirmed sir, six ship killers and four counter missiles," Mayweather said a moment later after checking his own scopes.

"Launch counter measures and defensive missiles!" Archer shouted. "Trip hows it coming?" He asked punching at the comms switch.

"Beautiful captain, another three minutes and we should be good to go," Trip answered his voice tense. He wanted to know what was going on, but knew he did not really want to know.

"We are going to have incoming before then, about two minutes before then, can you hurry?" Archer asked.

"Didn't need to know that captain," Trip said suddenly wishing he had an up to date will. "See what I can do, but I make no promises."

"Not asking for any, do your best." Archer signed off and turned to Reed. "Time?" He asked.

"One minute and forty seconds sir," Reed answered. Archer hoped it was not all the time he had left in the universe. Archer looked and could see counter missiles, eighteen of them, lancing out towards the Vulcans own missiles. It was strange, he had not heard them launch.

"I did not think that it would come to this," Soval said from behind him. Archer turned, he had honestly forgotten that the two Vulcans were on the bridge.

"What can you tell me about that ship?" Archer asked. "All I know is that it is very big and has at least ten missiles tubes."

Soval looked like he was being torn in two. On the one hand he wanted to help Archer get out of the problem he was in, but he also wanted to avoid betraying military secrets to a man who may well use them to kill his own people. It was an impossible position.

T'pol came to a different conclusion. "A vessel of the Deik'lavas class, of which Arakas is a member, carries twelve missile tubes and six defensive laser emplacements. She is capable of achieving speeds as high as Enterprise, though I do not know exactly how high, I also know that her onboard fuel reserves are insufficient to permit to her maintain such speeds for very long."

Archer nodded, intelligence had told him more or less the same thing. Certain Vulcan ships were as fast as Enterprise, though this was a result of incredibly massive engines and brute power rather than the revolutionary warp field streamlining used by Enterprise. But he had not known of the ships weaponry.

"Can you tell me anything else?" He asked, desperate for anything that could help him.

T'pol thought for a moment, she was not a naval officer and thus did not know much about Vulcan warships. It would not be at all logical for information on top of the line vessels to be readily available for anyone. But something occurred to her.

"A very large proportion of the ships volume is devoted to her reactors, warp drive and fuel. Possibly as much as forty percent of her interior spaces."

Archer nodded, that was hardly surprising, a ship that large would need an excessive amount of fuel to travel any significant distance. Her reactor had to be massive and would eat up an enormous amount of fuel even at low speeds. T'pol was not finished though.

"A typical cruiser with similar numbers of missile tubes and lasers to the Deik'laval class ships, will carry perhaps as many as one hundred and fifty missiles of all types." Archer blanched. Enterprise carried less than a third of that, and most of those were only defensive missiles.

"However," T'pol was finally getting to the point, "given her speed and the size of her fuel stores I doubt that the Arakas has a similar missile capacity."

"Indeed," Soval said jumping in. He had clearly decided to throw his lot in with Enterprise and T'pol. She nodded across from him, urging him to continue.

Soval took a breath. "The ship possesses extremely shallow magazines, possibly only four or five missiles per tube, though I do not know exactly how many."

Archer nodded and smiled slightly. It was not much, but at least he had something he could possibly use against the Vulcan.

"Time to impact?" Cho'kol asked as he impatiently paced the floor. In the minute and a half since launching his missiles he had begun to wonder if perhaps he had made the right call, or at least what his superiors would think of his handling of the situation.

"Ninety one seconds sir," the answer came from the tactical station.

"Has Enterprise made any effort to intercept or counter the missiles?" Cho'kol had been wondering why the earth ship had just sat there maintaining the same course as it had previously. As if unaware of the missiles headed her way.

"Nothing yet, though at this range it is difficult to know for certain," the sensor operator said almost glumly.

"Prepare another salvo of missiles same composition as previously," Cho'kol ordered. Even if the Enterprise managed to destroy this wave of missiles another would be waiting, and another, and another if necessary.

After that Arakas would begin to run low on missiles. Her size, though impressive was actually misleading. In a Vulcan cruiser of similar armament, the Dy'krevas class for instance, the ship possessed magazines sufficient to allow each one of her twelve tubes to fire off at least a dozen salvoes before beginning to run dry, on Arakas however this was a mere five salvoes.

This was due to the speed at which Arakas could travel. At speeds much beyond warp factor three point the power necessary to accelerate much farther became much greater, necessitating much more powerful reactors. In turn necessitating much more fuel if a ship was to cover any great distance even at low speeds.

It was a compromise as old as warp drive itself. Faster ships were larger because they needed to be in order to carry enough fuel for them to have a useful range. In turn vessels of only moderate speed could devote much more of their volume to things other than their propulsion plants. Namely missiles, cargo and crew areas.

Cho'kol did not much care for the specifics of starship design philosophy. He was more concerned about his immediate situation. He did not know exactly the effectiveness of the UE's missile defence systems, though he knew them to be below those of the Vulcan navy. Nor did he know how effective the systems fitted to Enterprise were, though he knew them to be well below those of his own ship.

He did know however that he needed to take out the earth ship in a reasonably short time period or he would deplete his magazines to badly to continue to fight. Thus as the second salvo was loaded into the tubes Cho'kol made the decision to increase the number of ship killer missiles included in the flight from six to eight. Opening up the ships other tubes to permit just four counter missiles to be launched. He hoped to overwhelm the Enterprise with the next salvo, assuming the first did not destroy the ship, which it very well might.

"Twenty seconds to optimal engagement range," Reed reported. UESN doctrine was to wait until incoming fire had reached a point where the ships defences would have the easiest time destroying them before engaging, and he had talked Archer into following suite.

"How are we coming on those engines?" Archer asked with just a hint of the panic he was starting to feel creeping into his voice.

"Another few seconds sir, how long do I have before it gets good?" Trip sounded tired and more than a little shaken up. Archer knew that the stress of the past few hours was starting to sink in. The man needed a good rest when this was all over, they all did.

"Around thirty now," Archer answered deciding it was not in his best interested to lie to him. Trip would find out in the end and would not be happy to learn that his captain had lied to him. "Hurry things along, but not to the point that we blow up."

"Are you doubting my work captain?" Trip asked, some of the old wit and playfulness returning to his voice.

"Just hurry," Archer said before signing off and doing his best to look unconcerned for the bridge crew.

"Twenty seconds to impact," the sensor operator reported. Cho'kol swore.

"Why haven't they engaged their missile defences?" He asked, though he did not expect and answer and would have found it insubordinate if any of his crew had dared to put one forward.

He watched the countdown and flight telemetry of the missiles as the moved ever nearer to the earth ship. At such close range it was almost suicidal for the captain to have not already engaged missile defences, so much the better for the limited magazines of the Arakas.

"Missiles entering optimal engagement range!" Malcom shouted, though Archer could see the same data he was and knew the moment the missiles entered the zone of death as it was known, an area around the ship where her missile defences were at their peak performance.

"Deploy all countermeasures, Travis get us out of here!" He ordered. In response the deck lurched beneath Archer as the ship began a surprisingly agile corkscrew manoeuvre in an attempt to get out of the incoming missiles paths. Alerts sounded as counter missiles and lasers raced outward to intercept the incoming warheads before they could damage the ship.

Triple arcs of pale blue lanced out from Enterprise's lasers, one beam missed at first and had to be readjusted, in response the missiles veered sharply off course in an attempt to confuse the beams targeting systems. When this failed they released a cloud of metal fragments ahead of them which diffused the incoming laser fire, making it nearly ineffective. One of the missiles, a ship killer, released its cloud of chips improperly and a gap was created large enough for the laser to still find its target. The missile exploded well clear of Enterprise.

In all this time six counter missiles from Enterprise had nearly reached the remaining Vulcan missiles, the escorting counter missiles moved to intercept and managed to knock two of the defending weapons out. Destroying them in a kamikaze attack. The four survivors knocked out a further trio of missiles, though one had taken damage to its guidance systems and exploded harmlessly several million kilometres away from any other missile.

The lasers from Enterprise had readjusted their beams and destroyed two further Vulcan missiles. A second wave of counter missiles reached the five remaining Vulcan missiles and destroyed them all just outside of their detonation range.

Cho'kol swore again, he thought he had cursed more in the last hour than he had in the last fifty years of his life. "Fire another salvo!" He ordered bellowing out the words in the ear of the tactical officer.

Twelve missiles arched out of Arakas's tubes, under normal combat conditions it was standard doctrine to keep at least two tubes in reserve loaded with counter missiles to defend against enemy fire, but Cho'kol wanted to increase his chances of destroying the Enterprise in this next volley. The fact that Enterprise had not fired any further salvoes at him made it unlikely that his ship would be caught off guard.

"All enemy missiles destroyed sir," Reed said his voice back to its normal volume. Travis cheered loudly, startling Hoshi. The glee was short lived however.

"Wait," Reed said his voice suddenly serious again. "I count at least another ten launch signatures coming from Arakas!"

"Trip how are we doing?" Archer asked into the comms audio pickup for what felt like the millionth time. There was no response.

"Trip how are we doing?" The voice of captain Archer asked again over the intercom for what felt like the millionth time. Trip was busy, wrapped around the new length of conduit he and his team were having a devil of a time getting the thing aligned properly into its sleeve.

Problems had also surfaced around the power feed lines to the magnetic containment generator assembly, but these were being fixed. All Trip needed was time. Time he could not spend talking to the captain. He signed to ignore the comm and continued his work, he could get yelled at later, right now he had a job to do.

Frustrated Archer signed off of the connection. Trip was probably busy, he understood. But Archer was feeling helpless, doubtlessly the Vulcans would have learned from their initial engagement and launched more ship killer missiles with their next salvo. And the targeting programs in the missiles would have learned from the flight data of the first wave as well and be harder to kill.

Even if Enterprise managed to destroy all of these next missiles, possible, though a bit of a stretch, then there would just be another salvo after that. And another, and possibly another. But even if the ship managed to survive through four missile salvoes, unlikely given her own limited stock of counter missiles and limited defences, the fifth would surely killed her.

With each evasive manoeuvre the Arakas drew closer, by the fifth salvo she would likely be within laser range of Enterprise. Practically spitting distance. Without warp drive all Archer could do was delay the inevitable.

He had considered turning to fight. Entering knife range and hoping that his ships smaller size and superior agility would allow her to land a crippling blow before the superior weight of fire from the Vulcan overwhelmed his own ship. But that would end almost surely in death. No, Archers only hope out of this was for Trip to get the warp drive back on line, and he was apparently not speaking at the moment.

"Missiles will be in range of Enterprise's defences in twenty seconds," the tactical officer reported. After seeing that impressive display of missile defence he had concluded that UE defensive systems were impressive, if extremely short ranged.

"Tell me when they enter optimal detonation range," Cho'kol said as he checked his magazines. He had only enough ship killers for a single salvo like the last, two if he split the ship killers. He was better stocked with counter missiles, but these were of limited utility in an offensive engagement like he had been having.

He had actually considered giving a similar order to Archer, moving his ship into knife fighting range and trusting in his better armour, superior laser armament and greater staying power to win the engagement before deciding better of it. He would just have to trust in his missiles to destroy the ship.

Trip cursed, something he rarely did. But he had just smashed his hand in the joiner between the new conduit and the rest of the line. Several hundred kilos worth of material had not felt good. But he worked through the pain, nothing was broken.

He was rewarded a second later. Suddenly it was almost as if the conduit had gained a mind of its own and slid down into the joiner with a smooth release of pressure. Ecstatically Trip slid home the magnetic field generator and powered it on. He then crawled back through into the corridor around the conduit and checked the connection.

He raced over to the comms panel and told the engine room to open the channel to the conduit. He did not need to tell the bridge, they would know he had done his job when the nacelles had powered up.

"Ten seconds before incoming reached optimal engagement range," Malcom reported. Even his voice was sounding shaky. Archer understood, so far all his attempts to get a target lock on the missiles had failed. Their own countermeasures were to good.

Travis suddenly jumped in his seat and shouted gleefully. "Sir! I show warp power as restored!"

Archer's eyes raced down to his own displays. Sure enough just as Travis had said the nacelles were once again getting fed plasma, the warp coils were powered up and ready. There was only one thing to do.

"Get us out of here!" Archer said with as much calm as he could muster.

"Its going to be bumpy," Travis said with his eyes toward Hoshi. She nodded glumly, it was hard to tell if she dreaded the incoming missiles more, or the thought of making a fast acceleration through warp.

The ship suddenly shook as she accelerated hard. It took her only twenty seconds to build up her speed to warp factor one, and another twenty to his warp two. She continued to drive hard into the upper warp measures.

"Follow them!" Cho'kol shouted as Enterprise disappeared of his sensors. The missiles seemed confused for a moment before self-destructing.

The bridge crew raced to carry out their captains order, the Arakas lumbered after the earth ship and accelerated as quickly as her greater mass would allow.

The race was going to be decided by physics rather than raw power. In such a race the much larger Arakas would clearly be the victor, however this contest could only be determined by the amount of realspace drag each ships respective warp field had. The lower the drag, the faster the ship could travel.

There was also a question of which ship would reach the upper limit of her speed first. Enterprise had never before been tested much past warp four, while Arakas could maintain speeds as high as warp factor four point two for brief periods.

"Warp factor three point five," Mayweather announced as the deck shuddered beneath him. The hum of the ships engines was almost defeaning as he pushed the ship for all she was worth.

Archer wished desperately to know if he was beating the Arakas. However while at warp the ship was functionally blind, light based sensors being useless while the ship was traveling faster than light. And she possessed only basic passive subspace sensors, none of which pointed aft due to the disturbances created by her warp field.

"Captain where is our current heading taking us?" Soval asked from beside Archer. Even so he could barely hear the man over the din of the engines as they roared to keep the shops accelerating this hard.

It was a question Archer did not honestly know the answer to. But Trip was to far away for his voice to reach him over the engines roar. Archer pretended he did not hear him, and when Soval touched his shoulder he acted like he could not hear the mans voice.

Soval did not press the matter. He knew they were accelerating deeper into Vulcan territory. Hopefully not into the waiting arms of a Vulcan government in on this scheme to capture Enterprise.

Soval honestly did not think that the plot had been officially sanctioned by the government, he knew full well the independence with which the navy operated. And how greatly its own agenda could diverge with that of the assembly. But the question remained how far the plot went, and how much of the fleet was in on it.

If the entire navy was a part of the plot then the next ship Enterprise encountered would likely open fire on them, and the next one. If the ship could avoid Vulcan naval vessels as much as possible as she made her way to the very core of the Vulcan nation then she should however be safe.

Soval just hoped that they could make it, or at least outrun the Arakas. He knew only that the cruiser was fast, he also knew Enterprise was fast. But he did not know which was faster, and frankly, this was not the manner in which he had hoped to find out.

The deck rocked as the ship breached the warp factor four barrier. Travis attempted to announce this feat, but his voice was drowned out by the engines. Soval turned and realized that the human at the linguistics station seemed to be under great stress. He had noted that she did not like the ships acceleration before, but this race seemed to be almost more than she could handle.

Honestly it was almost more than he could handle. He had been aboard ships before when they made aggressive warp jumps. But the acceleration Enterprise was pulling was just insane. The little ship was buffeted by the force of her speed, everything was shaking, one particularly big bump caused Soval to bite his tongue with enough force for it to bleed, he dismissed the pain and concentrated on the ships speed, watching as Enterprise plowed through warp factor four point one, factor four point two, four point three.

Finally she reached her limit at the upper end of warp factor four point four, her engines screeched as Travis fought to make the ship go even faster, but he was unable to do so. Local subspace conditions and the vessels limitations prevented her from going any faster. Soval, and everyone aboard, breathed a huge sigh of relief as the noise and jittering of the ship began to die down finally.

Again Cho'kol swore, the violence of his curse causing the helmsman to jump. Arakas was equipped with passive subspace sensors configured to detect warp signatures. Currently they showed Enterprise to be maintaining a speed as high as warp factor four point four. Arakas, even with her more powerful drive, struggled to make factor four point two.

She was not quite managing even at this speed and the engine room had made Cho'kol aware of the major risk of overheating across multiple systems. In order to achieve even this fantastic speed the ships reactor was currently being pushed past the redline at one hundred and thirteen percent.

It was dangerous, the magnetic fields controlling the reactors plasma could manage only so much and were now nearing the point of failure. When that happened…

Cho'kol ordered the ship to begin backing off its speed. They had lost this race. All that he could do now was return to the Vekia and send a message ahead of Enterprise to inform them that she had escaped Arakas and that a new plan was needed.

It was good that he had given the order to begin slowing. At warp factor three point seven the engine room reported a rupture along one of the secondary plasma feedlines to the warp coils. It was cointainable, but at any higher speed the ship would have been slammed out of warp aggressively and the rupture would have been far larger.

The damage limited the ships sustainable speed to just warp factor three point one. The news did not make Cho'kol happy. But he realised it was beyond his control. Honestly he was surprised the damage had not been much worse than it had been. His ship had managed to achieve speeds for much longer than anyone had thought was possible.

It was small consolation that a earth ship six times smaller than Arakas had managed to smash that warp sustainability record easily, but at least it was something to be given to command to show for his efforts.

As Arakas made her ponderous warp two turn back to the Vekia Cho'kol watched helplessly as the Enterprise held warp factor four point four steadily until she disappeared from her sensors. His mission had ended in failure and the results could prove catastrophic.

"Captain I cannot advise you on the proper method of dealing with your current situation. It is not my responsibility." Soval looked evenly across at Archer, and then to ambassador Fel. Archer sighed.

Fel had been kept in the dark about events until well after Travis had finally taken the ship down to a cruising speed of warp factor three point four. And then only because she had all but threatened to arrest the guard Archer had assigned to her quarters. She did not have that kind of power, but the frightened mechanic had not wanted to take his chances that she did.

Archer had told her all that he knew as she stormed onto the bridge, she had been calmed only by Soval, who also had to assure her that the vessel that had attacked Enterprise had indeed been a Vulcan ship. And not, as she suggested an Orion pirate vessel.

Two days later, once Archer was certain they were not being pursued he had taken the ship out of warp completely in the middle of the deep space between two star systems and convened a conference to debate the ships next moves.

Fel still seemed convinced that the attack was not by the Vulcan government, despite the assurances that they likely were given by ambassador Soval. It was odd to have the human apologizing and making excuses while the Vulcan owned up to his governments acts and tried to move ahead.

"Whatever you do captain you must not strain the relationship between our two governments by brashly declaring that they attacked this ship," Fel said it as an order. Though she likely knew that her words carried very little weight.

"And please, whatever you do you mustn't simple appear out of warp and declare that Vulcan attacked Enterprise, let them give their version of events before jumping to conclusions."

Archer was not sure, but he thought he caught Soval snort out of the corner of his eye. The man clearly thought very little of his associate. Archer did not blame him. A career butt kisser Fel had only earned her position through backstabbing and openly declaring her love of and support of Vulcan. For chairman Rubenetov, who drew much of his support from Vulcan, she was the perfect candidate for ambassador.

"Ma'am I am not coming to any conclusions, our sensor data is available to you if you want to confirm for yourself that we were indeed attacked by a Vulcan Deik'lavas class cruiser." Archer looked her right in the eye. Refusing to back down on his position. She finally huffed and threw her hands into the air.

"Well if you want to make a major diplomatic scandal then do what you must. Just be certain that you leave me when you storm out of Vulcan territory so I can run damage control behind you." She moved to storm out of the conference room, only to be stopped in her tracts by an irate T'pol.

"Do you really think that the captain is inventing something like this?" She asked, stopping Fel at the door. As the woman turned T'pol turned on her full Vulcan look of derision upon her.

"And would the fact that all members of the ambassadors staff, including the ambassador, corroborate the captains story not be sufficient to convince you that he is telling the truth? Even without looking for yourself at the data from the ships sensors of the battle?" She did not give the woman a chance to answer her question before she continued.

"Your refusal to accept the situation and pitiful and complete support for the Vulcan assembly shows that you are little more than a glorified pawn of your chaimans political games, and that you care little for your own government or its people." Fel moved to say something, clearly indignant at this attack, T'pol raised the volume of her voice.

"You have had ample opportunity over the past few days to look over the ships flight data, and yet you have refused. Proving that you do not care for the facts, I do not believe anything anyone says will convince you of the facts, so please leave and allow the reasonable people to get on with planning."

There had been enough of a command in her voice that Fel seemed to collapse, she walked out, dragging a confused aide with her out the door. T'pols glare followed her until the doors cycled shut behind her.

"Forgive me," she said bowing her head slightly to Soval and Archer. "She was a distraction."

"She is a bitch is what she is!" Trip said, true respect in his voice. He had always heard that Vulcans could tear a human apart, chew them up and spit them out. But he had never seen that ability used until now. He clearly found the power awe inspiring.

"I'm glad she is gone. Now lets get back to business." Archer drew everyones attention back to the matter at hand. Everyone looked at him expectantly. Thinking he had a plan, he did not, but hoped that would change by the time the meeting was dismissed.

"I agree with the ambassador that Vulcan itself does not have any direct knowledge of the attack, and that it was in all likelihood carrier out by fringe elements of the navy." He paused for a breath.

"What we need to work out is what we are going to do once we reach Vol'Sri." He looked around, but nobody was forthcoming with an answer.

Vol'Sri, the Vulcan homeworld and capital of the Assembly, was just a few days away at warp factor three point four. Between Enterprise and the system lay the core of the Vulcan civilization. Dozens of systems each likely possessing dozens of warships. Any of which were likely a part of the conspiracy to capture Enterprise. Archer had thus ordered a course directly to the homeworld to avoid any possibility of interception for as long as possible.

Archer currently was assuming that he and his ship would reach Vol'Sri unopposed. A gamble, but one that made sense if the conspiracy was small and did not extend to far. He had also dismissed returning to Earth due to the likely uproar that would be caused once the ship gave word of what had happened. Better to allow the Vulcans to explain themselves and perhaps fix what had happened first.

After several hours of further debate what eventually emerged was the most bare bones approach possible. Enterprise would warp into the Vol'Sri system and then radio the government, requesting that all warships leave the ships vicinity and that she be allowed to speak with the government directly, saying they had important information for them before they did anything else.

The probability of the Assembly doing this was not even discussed, the plan was as basic as possible and would hopefully result in a conversation being opened quickly, creating as little time for Enterprise to be attacked again as possible.

Part Five

"Sir we are entering the Vol'Sri system now." Mayweathers voice startled Archer, he was in the shower and had just woken up from his first real sleep in what felt like a year.

"I will be right there," he said, turning down the water so that only his voice would be heard on the comm.

He was on the bridge in a fresh uniform less than ten minutes later. Hair slightly damp still, but not to the point that it was noticeable.

"How long until we enter comms range?" He asked heading right for Hoshi's station.

"I can send a message now," she answered. "Just be aware that there will be a twenty second delay between when we send any messages, and when the planet receives them."

"Ok," Archer nodded. He had expected that much. But for his request he did not really need direct communications. "Send the message then please."

Hoshi nodded and a second later reported that the pre-recorded message compiled by Archer with the help of ambassador Soval had been sent to the Vulcan government requesting that all space borne traffic avoid Enterprise. No mention at this point was given of the attack by the Arakas.

"They have received the message sir," Hoshi said as an update a few seconds later.

Archer wondered how long it would take them to respond to his message. Yes it took twenty seconds to be received by the planet. But then the message had to be read by communications operators, sent to the appropriate person, their secretary would then read the message and then if said person was not to busy it would go to them to read through. And then the process would be repeated backwards for any response for Enterprise to be sent.

That being said it did not really take all that long for the message to be sent. Just a little less than fifteen minutes. For an equivalent message to be received and a reply mode for Earth it would have taken likely two, or even perhaps three hours.

"Please put it over the speakers," Archer asked even as Hoshi's hands flew over her board to do just that.

"Enterprise this is chief of naval operations home fleet admiral Yimur, your request is unusual to say the least, but not entirely unexpected. I have alerted all Vulcan warships to avoid an area sufficient to permit you safe passage to orbit of the planet."

"Interesting," T'pol said from beside Archer. He did not quite know how she managed it, but everytime he turned around the woman seemed to be there. Sneaking up on him without him ever noticing.

"That would imply some level of knowledge about the conspiracy." She looked over at Hoshi, "can you confirm the source of this message?" She asked.

Hoshi looked over her screens. "I cant say for certain, my Vulcan is patchy, and my knowledge of Vulcan comms ID tags is worse."

"May I?" T'pol asked, Hoshi shook her head and moved aside to allow room for her to work.

"It seems to check out," T'pol announced.

"Can you confirm that all Vulcan vessels are avoiding our path to the planet Travis?" Archer asked, wanting another source to corroborate that the admiral had been telling the truth.

Travis checked the ships navigational sensors for a moment before he answered. "Looks like it sir, I don't see a Vulcan warship within a million kilometres of our entry window."

"Take us in then," Archer said. He half expected another attack. But had not other option but to proceed.

The view of the system was breathtaking. As per established protocol Enterprise did not use active sensors to scan the system. Even so with just her passive scanners the ship picked up some impressive sights. Archer was impressed by the sheer scale of the systems space based infrastructure.

The Sol system possessed a dizzying array of orbital habitats, ore processing facilities, communications arrays, starship construction, repair and docking centres, and a virtual swarm of ships moving around the system at all hours. But still Sol paled in comparison to the absolute size of the traffic in the system.

With just passives, and able to scan only a tiny part of the system, Enterprise still picked up over two thousand impulse signatures corresponding to starships. All moving along steadily moving paths leading into and out of the system.

As Enterprise drew nearer to Vol'Sri itself even more was picked up. Hundreds of stations and satelites littered the planets orbitals, while thousands of shuttles and transports dotted the space between them. Constantly coming and going in a never ending swarm.

And that was not mentioning all the warships. The United Earth Stellar Navy, UESN, possessed at the moment six large and sixteen small cruisers and over a hundred patrol and attack craft. That number was more than surpassed by the thirty to forty Vulcan cruisers located throughout the system. And this impressive force represented just under a quarter of the navies total forces.

Archer was forced to admit that perhaps having the Vulcans as allies was actually a good thing. At least far better than having them as enemies. Their fleet, even the small portion that he could see, could easily take on Earth and win nine times out of ten.

The observation of the system came to an end as Enterprise entered orbit of Vol'Sri. Powering down her impulse engines and moving in on thrusters alone Archer was left feeling as if he were an incredibly small fish in a very, very big pond.

Just as Enterprise entered a stable orbit a new message flashed over Hoshi's board saying that a shuttle would be dispatched to pick up Archer, Ambassador Soval and whoever else was judged as needing to come. The shuttle would take them to the headquarters of the navy where they would speak with admiral Yimur.

With some major trepidation Archer permitted this, though he did take the precaution of having armed men to counter any boarding party if the shuttle was part of a second attempt to seize the ship. But, fortunately, that did not happen and a single pilot waved them aboard.

"Ahh captain I am so pleased to speak with you and find that you are alright." A tall, and somewhat hunched, Vulcan in a pure white naval uniform said as Archer, Soval, Trip and T'pol were brought into what looked like an office.

"Pleased to meet you," Archer and Trip mumbled as they looked around the room.

It was well decorated, wood floors melded into wood walls which in turn melded into a wooden desk and chairs. It was odd Archer thought for so much nature to be present in such a place. He normally associated Vulcans with drab metal and plastics. Not the homely and comfortable office before him.

"Admiral," Soval said from beside Archer. Yimur turned and bowed his head slightly in difference to his superior. "May I congratulate you on your appointment," he said. "Last that I had heard admiral Stevir was still in command of homefleet."

"There have been, changes," Yurim said with a touch of darkness. The man noticed Archers puzzled expression and a slight smile tugged at his lips. "Forgive me, I forget that you have been in the dark."

"Indeed we have," Soval said eying the admiral. "I gather that you have some knowledge of the plot to seize Enterprise then?" He asked.

Yurim nodded and sat down. Instinctively Archer followed suite, only to be reminded that it was Vulcan custom not to sit unless a seat was offered. This did not seem to trouble Yurim though. "Your logic is impressive," he said speaking to Soval.

"Indeed we did uncover the plot." He looked at Archer, "I must say captain you and your ship were impressive, from what we have gathered from the crews of the Arakas and Vekia you acquitted yourself quite well in the battle."

Archer was not sure how to take that. Frankly he had not anticipated this entire string of events, he also found it strange how the Vulcans were taking this whole development.

"You are talking about the Arakas attacking and trying to capture our ship right?" Trip asked, apparently as confused as Archer. "If so then you are taking a major conspiracy rather well."

Yulim smiled thinly. "I assure you that we take this entire situation quite clearly, would you like to hear of the events that have transpired since you were attacked?" He asked. Archer and Trip both nodded. Even Soval looked interested.

If they were expecting a long and detailed explanation however they were in for a let down. "Captain Cho'kol formerly of the cruiser Arakas sent a message to his superiors, my predecessor specifically, warning that his attack did not go as planned and that Enterprise was on its way. As the message was unscheduled it raised red flags when received and was decrypted, which raised more red flags. The conspiracy was uncovered and as we speak more than five hundred have been arrested. With the crew of the Arakas and Vekia adding to that figure substantially when they arrive in the nearest port."

Yulim looked at Archer, Trip, Soval and T'pol and nodded politely. "That is really all the detailed that I am going to give you at this time." Archer thought Trip was about to ask further questions, but the admirals face dissuaded him of that idea.

"So what happens now?" Archer asked finally. All eyes suddenly turned to him.

"That is up to you and your vessel captain," Yulim answered, Archer blinked. Not understanding the statement.

"What do you mean?" Trip asked.

"I mean that what happened to your vessel was a massive disaster for our government and represents a stunning betrayal of centuries of coexistence between our two races. As the perpetrators of said betrayal, even if only a tiny fraction of us as a whole, it is not up to us to decide what is to be done next." T'pol looked surprised, but she knew not to ask further questions.

Archers head swam as he felt the sudden weight of the responsibility of telling Earth about this. Doubtlessly he would be made a scapegoat, first of the government, chairman Rubenetov in particular, then by the populace as a whole. And then there would be the public reaction, the protests and striked. The madness.

Even if the government managed to remain intact, far fetched as it was due to its leaders devotion to the Vulcans, the public perception of the Vulcans would forever shift, and with it would likely come Earths stability. The UE was self sufficient in terms of its basic needs, but many high technology items and rare resources came as a result of trade with the Vulcans. With this gone the economy would suffer, in response the government would likely turn on the Vulcans. Blaming them for everything. Leading in turn to yet more anger and suspicion of the formerly close Vulcans.

It was almost more than Archer could bare to think about. It would be madness he knew. And although nothing as savage and debased as former revolutions would likely occur, the UE was to stable for that. Its reputability and control over the public would be forever altered. As would the perception of the Vulcans. No matter what they did to make right their actions.

At first Archer did not even think about the alternative, not saying a word. It would be easy to make up some story and allow the status quo between Earth and Vulcan to continue. A relationship that had its faults yes, but that had lasted for hundreds of years and was responsible for making Earth the prosperous and united planet it was today.

The question of what to do, which answer was right, the truth that had the potential to destroy everything and cause deep and lasting harm, or the lie that would preserve things as they currently stood, and potentially serve to even improve things, gnawed at Archer for almost five minutes as he struggled with his internal battle. But eventually he did come to a decision.

"Captain I must say that I am going to miss you," ambassador Soval said as he emerged from the shadows of the veranda just outside the assemblies chambers in T'pliori, the capital city of the Vulcan Assembly. Archer was startled, but recovered quickly.

"I could say the same ambassador," Archer said. And he meant it. Getting to know Soval over the past weeks, first aboard Enterprise and then on Vol'Sri in the aftermath of their arrival had been, enlightening to say the least.

And now they were to part ways. Archer had just received permission from the UESPA to begin an official tour of the worlds of the Assembly. Something that no Earth ship had done before.

It was new territory, for humans anyway. Despite centuries of interaction little was known of the Vulcans. Their culture had been shown in a deliberately sanitized and simple form by the few Vulcans that did interact directly with humanity. While virtually nothing was know of the true extent of their civilization, its history and even its age.

That was something that Archer was looking forward to changing. Following his decision the Assembly had given Enterprise free reign to explore its territory. It was a major departure from the ships original mission to chart and explore scattered frontier bordering Earths colonies. Mapping and making contact with as many of the possibly hundreds of small settlements that dotted the starscape around the Sol system before the ship pressed into truly deep space. But things had changed and Archer found himself almost liking his new assignment more.

The UE had been somewhat shocked as news of the Vulcan invitation reached them. And it had taken almost a week to get a response, in addition to the nine day delay each way for a message to reach Earth from Vulcan territory. But once their answer had been received it had been a resounding yes.

The ship was being prepped as Archer stood there. More fuel and supplies were being taken on and the damage from the battle with the Arakas was being repaired under the watchful eye of Trip.

"I do hope that events since our departure from Earth have not soured your opinion of us captain." Soval moved to stand right beside Archer, though he did not imitate the pose the human had, arms resting against the railing.

"On the contrary I think they have improved my opinion of Vulcans," Archer could feel Soval shift his position and look at him.

"How so?" He asked not expecting the response he got. "Do humans bond with their attackers often?"

Archer laughed, Soval had been plainly apologetic over the last few days, clearly he felt particularly guilty over what had happened. Likely because Selvek had been a member of his staff and yet he had not seen or deduced what was going on until it was nearly too late.

Archer decided to explain. As best as he could anyway. "I think that if nothing else this whole experience has shown us, me in particular, how similar we are as species." Archer paused to collect his thoughts before continuing.

"A few centuries ago my planet was ripped apart by factionalism. Social, ethnic and religious divisions caused us so many problems. We very nearly destroyed ourselves." Again he paused, this time to make sure that Soval was following him. Seeing that he was he continued.

"And then, after millennia of this division and strife we suddenly found a race, or rather you found us, that had managed all that. You." He paused to collect his thoughts again.

"I think that what we humans took away from our interactions with you was that your species was cold, calculating and unfeeling. And totally the same. One Vulcan was the same as all Vulcans."

"Ideally that is what we strive for," Soval pointed out. Archer nodded.

"That's my point," he said.

"We developed the idea that whatever one of you did was the sentiment of all. That you were all the same, and that you wanted us to be like you. Your pushing your Surak on us did not help matters."

"We came to see you as controlling. As a race you looked down on us."

"That was not the case captain," Soval said.

"But that was how it seemed from our point of view. And some of you did feel that way," Archer said. Soval was forced to concede that point.

"I saw all Vulcans like that," Archer admitted. "Self-praising and capable of seeing no fault in themselves while pointing out the flaws in us. Holding us back even. "

"And that attitude has changed?" Soval asked wondering where Archer attacks against his people would end.

"I think that, seeing the worst in your race, the depths that you can go to has humanized you, in my eyes at least. It shows that you have flaws and that you don't always do the right thing, that even with your logic you can reach different conclusions."

"Humanized?" Soval asked wondering where this was going.

"It's a good thing." Archer assured him. "It makes you more relatable. More understandable."

"You are coming to understand us," Soval said seeing Archers point. The human nodded. Soval smiled thinly. "Then our two species have reached a turning point," he said.

"What do you mean?" Archer asked, his turn to be puzzled.

"With the last centuries our two races have existed in a very strict manner," he said. "We delivered aid, but deliberately kept ourselves aloof of your affairs, also keeping our distance. This is going to change now." Soval looked at the human. "What it becomes is up to you."

Archer said nothing. He really did not have time to say anything. His communicator beeped, warning him that he needed to get to the shuttle that would take him back to enterprise, he said a brief goodbye to Soval and then left at a brisk jog to the spaceport.


End file.
